CREATOR
by DinosaurNothlit
Summary: A continuation of the MONSTER/VILLAIN/HERO series that came after GONE. The Rockborn Gang has just discovered a dark and terrible secret about their world. Now, in order to save their world from itself, they must find a way to alter reality and defy the natural laws of the universe in ways they've never imagined.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: FORGOTTEN FOES

_I'm an artist, damn it._

Justin DeVeere was used to looking at things from every angle, looking deeper than the surface, understanding the parts and pieces of things. It was what he did, who he was.

But, even he had to admit, never before had he seen anything like this. Not even in his mind's eye. It was incomprehensible. It was a world thrown through a blender, torn apart yet still whole, shifting in impossible ways, coming together and splitting apart, like a world-encompassing kaleidoscope.

He looked down at himself and yelped, a sound that didn't so much come out as a sound as a puff of angry smoke. He was two people at once, the human and the monster. Justin DeVeere and Knightmare were superimposed over/inside/around each other. He could see his human body, made unfamiliar by exposed tissues and veins with blood running beside them, at the same time he could see that blue-and-coral exoskeleton with its lobster claw on the left and sword-like blade replacing his hand on the right.

He wandered, not so much walking as drifting, with only a vague sense that he was still somehow in Grand Central Station. It was impossible to have any sense of time in this place, this twisting fractal maze of pipes and wires and marble and tile and train tracks. It might have been a minute, it might have been a year, but after that interminable length of time, Justin knew he wasn't quite alone.

"Argh, help me!" came a voice that wasn't a sound so much as a mist, like the fog rising from a stream before the sun's heat could chase it away.

It was the mutant who called himself Bengal Tiger. He was similarly split between his saber-toothed beast of a morph and his human form, an impulsive, reckless young man named Caleb Abernathy. But his morphed form was destroyed. It looked like he had fallen into a shredder, one of those industrial machines for destroying documents, up to his thighs. Ragged tatters of flesh hung from his hips where his legs should have been, and he lay gasping in agony in a pool of his own blood.

Justin rushed to Tiger's side, more out of eagerness for the potential lifeline Tiger represented than out of any concern for his teammate's well-being. He recognized the pattern of the damage. It was Dekka's power that had done this.

"De-morph, you idiot," Justin chastised him. The morphing process healed injuries as long as your human form was not injured. Or at least, in the "normal" world, that was how it worked.

Funny, Justin thought, that anything about that world seemed normal now.

But Caleb/Tiger shook his head impatiently. "Morphing, de-morphing, that clearly means nothing here. I'm already morphed AND de-morphed! I can't- ugh, it hurts! Where the hell are we? How do we get out?!"

"There was a girl, right? Skin like a rainbow?" Justin asked. "She touched me and then here I was. I'm guessing you too?"

Caleb nodded, still wincing in pain. Justin noted with indifferent curiosity that he could literally see Caleb's pain, written in glowing light jabbing sharply across his brain and nerve endings. "Who was she?" Caleb asked.

"No idea. Clearly a mutant with some kind of madness-inducing power." But even as he said it, he knew that wasn't true. This wasn't mere madness, this was no hallucination. If anything it felt more real than reality.

Justin sighed impatiently at another wail of agony from Caleb. "Just, I don't know, focus on your human form. Your human form is fine, just try to tune out your morph, or whatever!"

As he spoke, he tried to morph, himself. He could feel his Knightmare body strengthening as he focused, layering itself over his human form. "Like this," he said to Caleb.

Caleb had had a lot less experience with morphing than Justin. Yet, as Justin watched, Caleb focused, and his human form seemed to layer itself over Bengal Tiger, just as Knightmare had done.

Something was wrong, though. The morph wasn't healing. Instead, Caleb stood up on his human legs while his broken morphed body seemed to levitate. As if he was standing on legs that weren't there.

The bleeding hadn't stopped, but somehow seemed to reverse. Tiger was still bleeding, but now the blood was looping tightly around and back into his body as fast as it was hemorrhaging out. It reminded Justin of solar flares, those telescope images of flames looping out of the sun and then back in.

Or at least that's what it looked like was happening. It was impossible to be certain what was _actually_ happening inside this reality-kaleidoscope. The only thing he knew for sure was that the pain signals in Caleb/Tiger's brain and nerves had ceased. He was healed, even while simultaneously still injured. Both at once. A feat that would be impossible anywhere except here.

Schrödinger's saber-toothed cat. Justin laughed silently to himself at that parallel. He was no physics major, but like everyone else he'd seen the memes, the t-shirts with alive-and-dead cats, enough times to find Caleb's situation funny.

"What's so funny?" Caleb asked, and too late Justin realized that Caleb could see his brain waves the same as he could see Caleb's.

"Schrödinger's cat. Alive and dead. Or in your case, injured and whole."

"Schrödinger's Cat," Bengal Tiger, whose uninspired "mutant name" was already changing in his mind, mused. Then, the newly-minted "Schrödinger" grinned. "Yes, I quite like that. Come on, Knightmare, let's get out of here."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: AND THE VOTE GOES TO . . .

It was unanimous.

Nobody, not one member of the Rockborn Gang, could vote to have the world destroyed. Not one of the ten could vote to give up. Not the ruthless Shade, not cold and calculating Astrid. Not even the increasingly dejected Malik.

Simulation or not, facing apocalyptic doom or not, as long as there was a world, there was a tiny ray of hope. Even if it was only false hope. And besides, how could a mere ten people decide to end the lives of seven billion? Who gave them that right?

Malik supposed that he himself had given them that right. He, or a future version of himself, had built the AI that was running this simulated world, after all.

He wondered at how much data "he" had fed into it. He knew he had used his own memories, and Shade's, but how many others? How many of the people before him were real, how many merely a product of "his" imagination?

He immediately scolded himself for even thinking in those terms. They were real. Regardless of the circumstances of their creation, regardless of the memories that had seeded the AI that had formed them, they now had their own thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams. They were as real as Malik was.

Which he supposed still might be "not very."

"Okay, so we saved the world again," Shade said sarcastically, breaking Malik from his darkening thoughts. "That was much easier than last time. Question is, what now?"

Malik suddenly felt someone watching him. Well, someone there in the "real" world, not the omni-present Dark Watchers whose sightless gaze was no less oppressive even now that he knew they were merely human.

He turned slowly to see Astrid obviously deep in thought, her intense gaze focused on him. She looked like she'd already been carefully considering the answer to Shade's question, "what now?" and had merely been waiting for someone to ask it. But instead of directly answering Shade, she had turned to Malik.

"Malik, you said that, well, _you_, told you that someone else once broke out of this simulation, correct? Pete Ellison. My little brother." Her voice caught, just the tiniest bit, such a slight change in timbre that only Cruz (not even Sam) noticed it. "He didn't just break through it, though. He changed it. He had the power to alter reality itself. He _altered_ the simulation. In ways he probably didn't even understand."

Astrid pointed at Malik for emphasis. "Future-you told you that _he_ could not alter the simulation. That nobody on the outside of it can. But it CAN be altered, at least from within. Every one of us, and all seven billion simulated humans, alter the simulation, every single day. Albeit in very small ways, normally. Sure, we could argue back and forth about the existence of free will, but in the end even that doesn't matter. You know why? The rock. I think I'm starting to get it now, why the powers contained in the rock can break the laws of physics as we understand them. That AI future-you was talking about? The AI he created? In doing what it did, in sending the fragments of the rock to Earth, it has broken the status quo that the former laws of physics represented. It broke the status quo in a big way. Big enough to make me believe that it wants something to change. If we can even talk about what an AI 'wants.' But, what if, what it 'wants,' for lack of a better term, is to actually cede control of the simulation to us?"

Sam sighed ever so slightly at Astrid's speech. His wife had that smug voice she got when she was explaining something that only she was smart enough to figure out.

But even as brilliant as she was, she seemed to have forgotten who she was talking to.

"The AI, or at least the rock which is clearly an extension of the AI's will, shows intentionality," Malik answered calmly. "These powers we have, they are not random. Not fully, anyway. I was in pain, and now I can project my pain. Sam lived years in a transparent force-field dome, and now he can create his own force-field domes." He shot a meaningful look at Cruz, the girl in a body of a boy, the multiple-choice answer on a true-false test as Shade had once put it, who could now project the illusion of whatever body she wanted. But Malik said nothing, the look was enough. "Astrid, you yourself needed the physical strength to restrain Drake, and that's exactly what you got."

Astrid opened her mouth to speak again, but this time Dekka cleared her throat. Dekka could project a sense of deadly seriousness when she wanted to, and even Astrid didn't dare interrupt her when she was determined to speak. "That's a nice little theory and all, but I firmly expected to get my gravity-cancelling power back again this time around. That's nearly all I was thinking about, the whole time that stupid rock was in my system doing its thing. If what you're saying is true, and the rock is just a tool to allow us to alter reality however we see fit, then why wouldn't it listen to me?" She glanced at Sam. "For that matter, why didn't you get your old power, Bubble Boy?" she teased him gently. "Don't try to tell me it wasn't on your mind."

Sam smiled ruefully. "What makes you think I wanted my old power back? I'm done with the killing light."

_Now_ it was Astrid's turn to speak again. "It isn't about what we want. Not entirely. This program, the simulation created by this AI, is not a perfect one. Well, think about it. We have been living in the simulation all our lives, and consider what flawed creatures humans are. I don't think this AI cares about what is right or good. No, it almost certainly doesn't. And we know it leaves plenty of room for random chance. Again: look at the world we live in. Not to mention that the ASO rock itself considers external, for example DNA-based, inputs just as much if not more than human thought." This was followed by a glance at the soundly-sleeping form of Armo splayed across an easy chair. Armo, or Aristotle Adamo as he was almost never called, had the power to turn into a creature that very strongly resembled a humanoid polar bear, ever since a government facility had given him a dose of polar bear DNA along with his shot of the space rock.

Silence descended, but not for more than a moment or two before Shade spoke up. Even before the super-speed, she had never been very patient. "Okay, cool," she said impatiently. "So. I must ask again. What now?"


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: BACK TO THE OTHER SIDE

"What now" was, first of all, to get some rest (Armo had had the right idea). They had all been awake at least since midnight, and most of them well into the early hours of the morning, voting and then discussing what their vote had meant. It wasn't quite the same kind of exhaustion they were so very used to, the sharp and urgent tiredness left behind in the wake of adrenaline. No, this was an slower-burning but more inescapable exhaustion, the kind born of near-despair. Exhaustion from seeing yourself trapped with no way out. Or, at least,_ almost_ no way out. But then again, perhaps false hope was the very most exhausting emotion of all.

After a night of unsatisfying sleep filled with futile thoughts, "what now" was to ask too much of Francis once again. It had been a couple of days now since their final battle against Vector, but of course not nearly long enough for her broken leg to have healed. She had a cast on it now, and crutches to help her walk, but she was still far from fully getting the hang of hobbling around that way.

And it did not help that she kept using her powers to "cheat," rather than to walk at all.

But when Malik, Astrid, and Edilio told her what they had in mind, she seemed more than willing to go along with it. "I've never moved this many people at once before, but it should work." After a moment's thought, she winced, not from pain, but from worry. "You'd _all_ have to be touching me for me to bring you across. If even one of you were to let go . . . " she let that thought hang in the air. Malik nodded seriously, remembering the terrifying time he had spent thinking he was trapped forever in Francis's dimension, what she simply called "Over There."

"I've got a plan for that," Astrid said. "Quick question, do you have to be physically touching the person, or would some kind of tether work just as well?"

One phone conversation between Edilio and General Eliopoulos and just shy of half an hour later, the whole Rockborn Gang were fitted with heavy-duty military-green-and-black harnesses attached to tethers as thick as cables, all clipped securely onto the identical harness that Francis was wearing. The other nine members of the Rockborn Gang were the spokes of a wheel, with Francis at the hub.

As ridiculous as it looked, it nevertheless worked, and Francis was able to pull all ten of them Over There. Malik was almost used to the fractured array of otherwise familiar objects twisted inside out, at least as much as anyone could ever get used to seeing things never meant for mere three-dimensional eyes. The others had been there briefly, but usually in and out before they'd had a chance to take in very much of the bizarre sights.

But Astrid, Sam, Edilio, Cruz, and Simone were now seeing it for the first time. Astrid came the closest to comprehending it, at least in the sense that she had a theoretical understanding of what this "place" represented. But of course even her brain still only existed in three dimensions, so she was left to stare at the incomprehensible ways the pieces of military furniture and massive steel doors and underground tunnels and dirt and roots and worms split apart and came back together based on seemingly nothing more than the angle she turned her head. And she only had the vaguest notion of there suddenly being directions she had no words for, ways to move that were neither up/down nor left/right nor forward/back.

Astrid, always so coolly certain of her own intellect, had finally reached the limits of what she could ever possibly understand. And that made her just slightly nervous on some instinctive level.

It didn't take long for the ten of them to rediscover the blank white and blessedly three-dimensional space behind the grey circle that Malik had found before. He had warned them about the amoeba-like defenses, and the Rockborn Gang had brushed those easily aside.

"Greetings," Future-Malik said, smirking ever so slightly at the spectacle of nine people tethered and harnessed to the smallest person among them. He had already been waiting for them. Of course. He was one of the Watchers, after all. "I noticed that you voted not to die." That should have been happy news, yet his voice sounded full of pity.

Edilio stepped forward and got right to the point. "We've decided to try to save this world. And we think you can help us." Future-Malik looked like he was about to speak, but Edilio held up a hand to cut him off. "We already know that you cannot alter the simulation directly. But there are two other things we know. One. We know that you are one of the Watchers. Which means that you can see every Rockborn mutant."

"Not quite 'every,'" Future-Malik corrected, tilting his head pointedly towards Francis. "There may be others like your friend here, others with powers that allow them to exist outside the simulation in some capacity, and I would have no way to know. What I do know is that there are at least seven-hundred and fifty-four Rockborn mutants. So far."

"So many?" Dekka said, startled.

"So few?" Simone asked at almost the same moment. She glanced at Dekka. "New York City has a LOT of people, and there were rock fragments spraying almost everywhere. I'm amazed there's fewer than a thousand from there alone, and that's not even counting people elsewhere who might have gotten some of the rock."

"Unfortunately, your government has managed to eliminate many of the potential mutants. A fair few more have, well, decided to end it themselves. And there may be who-knows-how-many more like Francis that I simply cannot see. But seven-hundred and fifty-six is how many we know of for certain."

"Wait. Seven-hundred and fifty-six? But you _just_ said seven-hundred and fifty-four!" Sam protested.

"Two more showed up while we were talking. One in New York, one somewhere in Afghanistan."

"You have the data readout open in another tab right now?" Astrid asked nonchalantly. Future-Malik was about to clarify that they didn't really use "tabs" anymore but then decided that wasn't important and simply nodded.

Astrid suddenly had a mental image of the "real" Future-Malik sitting in front of a computer, or perhaps with a virtual reality headset on, as he projected his avatar here into the simulation. It would have seemed funny, had Astrid not felt a stab of angry jealousy that he could come and go from this world as he pleased, while she and all of her friends were trapped.

Sam sighed grimly and threw up his hands. "Fantastic. So at literally any second there could be another Vector."

"There are currently eleven Rockborn mutants with some form of insect control or transformation," Future-Malik said. "None of them can spread disease. There are four Rockborn who can spread disease, but in two cases the diseases in question appear to be relatively mild, or, in one other case, slightly beneficial, like a vaccine." He hesitated before adding, "The last one, the only one of those four who would pose a serious threat, appears to be a genuinely good person, who I find very unlikely to use his powers for ill. If you'll pardon the pun."

"Thanks, Cerebro," Rockborn-Malik said to his future-doppelganger. Upon receiving a couple of confused looks, he clarified, "Cerebro is the machine that Professor X could use to find other mutants. From X-Men. Come on, people."

"Anyway," Edilio said, starting to feel slightly exasperated and wanting to stick to business. "There's one more thing we need to ask of you. That is, if you really are serious about helping us?"

Future-Malik looked away guiltily. "Anything. I owe it to you to help you in any way I can."

"Good," Edilio said with a curt nod. "From what I understand, this is some kind of pocket dimension that you created separate from the 'main' simulation, yes? If that's right, and you can fabricate your own smaller realities, then we will need you to make us another one."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: LEAVING SO SOON?

Grand Central Station in New York City was, on foot, a very long way from the Rockborn Gang's new lair in the Maryland hills. Or at least, it would have been a very long way, if Schrödinger and Knightmare had only been traveling in three dimensions. Distance worked very differently in this "place." Three-dimensional space often shifted and even curled in on itself, bringing two locations closer together, like points on a rolled-up/folded/crumpled piece of paper. Making it easy enough to simply "teleport" from place to place.

Even so, and even with the ability to see straight through everything they looked at, even knowing exactly who they were looking for, they still searched tirelessly but fruitlessly for days. Or was it weeks? Or mere hours? It was almost impossible to judge time "here."

During those days (or whichever unit of time was relevant) the pair grew hungrier and hungrier. There was nothing to eat in this "place." There was, here and there, water. A little bit of water must have somehow trickled over from the "real world." So thirst was not a threat, but hunger still was. They could _see_ food, but the problem was, nothing in the "real world" was solid in n-dimensional space. Caleb grabbed at any food he saw with his human hands, tried to use his tiger's claws to slash at anyone walking down the street with a bagged lunch or hot dog, but he was an unseen ghost. Unable to touch, unable to take, what he increasingly desperately needed.

They both could keenly feel the ever growing, gnawing pain in the pits of their stomachs. Not only that, they could both literally see inside their own digestive systems as they grew emptier and emptier. They could see their own muscles beginning to be broken down for much-needed protein. It was uniquely horrifying to watch yourself starve in such intimate detail.

But Caleb, at least, wasn't merely starving. He was hungry, but in a much more predatory way than whatever Justin might be feeling. He could feel his already cat-like senses and reflexes growing sharper, laser-focused and honed by the slow and ominous onset of starvation. He could almost swear that his claws and teeth were sharper now. He was a predator in search of prey.

As they wandered farther and farther from civilization, and as they were beginning to lose any hope of surviving, sheer dumb luck finally turned in their favor. They saw. Her. The rainbow-skinned girl!

She was deep inside a hidden underground lair in the wilderness, but there was no such thing as "hidden" to Caleb and Justin. They could see her bright colors through/around the walls and dirt. They saw the cast on her leg, but they also glimpsed the broken bone itself, slowly knitting itself back together.

"Perfect," Caleb said in a purring, predatory growl. "She's weak!"

"Not so fast," Justin said. "We need her alive. She dies, and we're trapped here forever!"

Even as desperate as they were, they knew they had no choice but to keep their distance. It was not possible to sneak up on someone in n-dimensions. There was nothing to hide behind when any object viewed from the right angle would merely fragment and move aside, leaving them exposed to view.

But, on the other hand, there were so very many directions in which to look, more places than were possible in three dimensions. As long as they kept their distance, and with just a bit of luck, they would easily remain unseen by the rainbow-skinned girl during her brief trips into n-dimensional space.

Then, their opportunity finally came. The entire Rockborn Gang, all ten of them (they'd added a couple members since either of the two villains had seen them last, it seemed), tethered to the rainbow-skinned girl, and they were all coming into this dimension!

Caleb and Justin moved eagerly towards the group, but the Rockborn Gang vanished before the pair could reach them. Just, vanished. They weren't in n-dimensional space, but neither were they back in the "real world."

"Damn it!" Caleb cried out in frustration. "Where did they go?"

"Shh!" Justin hissed back. "They might be back." He had spotted a grey circle that he hadn't noticed before, but which seemed to be the only persistent thing about the kaleidoscope landscape around them. How had he never noticed that?

Didn't matter. What mattered was that that was where the Rockborn Gang had vanished into. Justin beckoned Caleb with a wave of his hand, and pointed at the circle.

They both crept closer, but amoeba-like blobs swarmed lazily towards them. Justin recoiled, but Caleb ran forward eagerly. He coiled the muscles in his unseen legs and pounced on the insubstantial "creature," which was nevertheless the most substantial thing he'd encountered in far too long. He didn't know what it was, and he didn't care. It was prey.

Justin winced as his friend (to his own surprise, he had indeed begun to consider his former teammate under Vector as a "friend," although that word didn't evoke any feelings of loyalty to him) tore into the living jello blob like a . . . well, like a tiger catching its prey.

"What even is that?" Justin asked.

"It's nothing," Caleb said disappointedly, spitting the gooey thing back out. "It isn't anything. It sure isn't food. Damn it I'm HUNGRY!"

"What, you think you're the only one?" Justin whispered in that kind of harsh whisper that was meant to urge quiet. He whispered, because the Rockborn Gang could come back from wherever they were at any moment, and they would both need the element of surprise. "They'll be back. We'll get them. We have to."

They waited. Time seemed to stretch on and on, yet it felt shortened at the same time. Was time itself distorted in this place? Caleb seemed to remember hearing somewhere that time was a dimension, not so different from the three dimensions of space. If space was distorted and had seemed to add extra "dimensions" in this place, then maybe time had done the same.

It was simultaneously an eternity and a mere moment before the Rockborn Gang reappeared.

"JESUS CHRIST!" one of them immediately cried out as she practically barrelled into the waiting pair. Her morph, visible under her human form, was blue-skinned and covered in tiny insect wings.

But Schrödinger was already attacking, dodging nimbly around/through her before she could react. She was not his target. The rainbow-skinned girl was.

"NO!" Justin screamed as he helplessly watched Schrödinger pounce with all the liquid power of a tiger. But Schrödinger was not aiming to kill. Francis threw up her arms in front of her face, but Schrödinger head-butted her full-force in the chest (she tried at the last second to dodge in a direction there was no word for, but Schrödinger was faster), knocked her down, spun, and ripped his sword-like fangs into her one good leg, all in one fluid movement that took less than a second.

She cried out in pain. The others immediately started "morphing," their morphed forms layering over their human bodies. One of them, not quite a girl nor quite a boy, looked down at their morphed body, a lanky creature with orbs of green-blue-and-red glass deeply embedded in dark silvery skin, as though they had never seen it before.

Shade changed the fastest, almost instantly taking off running, but she was jerked back by the military-grade tether that still connected her to Francis. Francis cried out again, this time in a mixture of pain and surprise, as Shade's sudden panicked motion jerked her about ten feet forward.

But now it was Knightmare's turn to take advantage of the distraction that Schrödinger had provided. He bounded forward, and aimed his terrible sword. Not at any one member of the Rockborn Gang, but at the tethers that connected them. Shade's sudden movement had jerked Francis forward, away from Schrödinger, but it also had pulled the rest of the tethers together. Knightmare could slice through all eight (minus Shade) in one cleave!

Shade saw his blow coming in slow motion, but she didn't know how to stop it. She knew she was not strong enough to deflect it. And even as thick and heavy as that tether was, it might as well be tissue paper to Knightmare's sword.

Shade's mind buzzed a mile a minute, knowing there was a solution just on the tip of her tongue, but it wasn't until the sword was mere inches away from making contact that she figured it out. There were extra dimensions! Extra ways to move! She could- but she had to act fast.

She yanked on each of the tethers, one by one. Not forward or back or up or down, but, nevermind, the word for it didn't matter. What mattered was that Knightmare's sword would no longer make contact with any of the tethers she yanked, instead it would go around.

Shade yanked on Malik's tether as Knightmare's sword came down towards it, then Simone's, Dekka's Cruz's Edilio's but then even she was out of time! Knightmare slashed through Astrid's and Armo's tethers, leaving them cut off, and right then, as his sword bit into Sam's tether, Shade saw too late that Francis was now in motion again. Francis's powers took only a fraction of a second to activate once she had shaken off the shock of Schrödinger's attack, but that fraction of a second was a palpable moment to Shade.

Nevertheless there was nothing she could do besides shout an inaudibly fast "NO!" as Francis shifted back into the "real world."

Taking Knightmare, whose sword was still touching Sam's tether, with her.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: HUNGER

Knightmare couldn't even begin to process what had just happened, it had happened so fast. But that didn't matter! He was back in the real world!

He de-morphed as quickly as he could, becoming human again within a second. But not before Dekka could leap towards him and point both of her cat-like paws, palms forward, directly at his face from inches away.

"Now listen here you piece of-" but before she could finish, he had collapsed, shivering weakly, to his knees.

Dekka lowered her hands ever so slightly. Enough to see Justin's face. His gaunt, hollowed out face, his eyes sunken.

She knew that look. Four years ago, she had known it far too well. She'd known it from every person she cared about, and she'd known it from her own face in the mirror. It was the face of starvation. The face of slow, agonizing death as your own desperate body ate itself from the inside out.

"Please, I'm begging you," Justin croaked, and the voice, too, was all too familiar. Starvation had a voice, as well as a face. "Something to eat, anything. Then you can kill me."

"That's . . . anticlimactic," Simone muttered under her breath.

Francis looked sick, but not from the pain in her freshly wounded leg. She locked her eyes on Justin's pained face, forcing herself to look at him. Forcing herself to face what she, Francis, had done to him. She had locked this man away in another dimension and left him to starve, to die slowly and painfully.

She told herself that she simply had not thought about it, had not realized what would happen. And then, when that weak excuse didn't work, she told herself that this man was a villain, a murderer, that hundreds of people had died because of him. She'd seen the video of what had happened on the Golden Gate Bridge, and she knew there wasn't a shred of good in a person who could do something like that to so many innocent people.

But that still didn't quite work to soothe her guilt. So, she told herself, she would need to get a gun. She would get a gun and carry it with her, so that maybe the next time, she could make sure that there would be no slow deaths.

Dekka lowered her hands all the way, and turned to Edilio, but Edilio was already moving. He had unclipped his harness and had taken off down the steel hallway of their underground lair. He knew the look and voice of starvation, too. And he was not willing to stand there and watch anyone, even an enemy, feel that pain.

Dekka, Sam, Simone, Cruz, Shade and Malik then turned their attention to the injured Francis, her one unbroken leg still bleeding profusely from Schrödinger's vicious attack. She was still in morph, and even her blood had a shimmery rainbow effect, like liquid technicolor fire. Malik handed Dekka his shirt so she could staunch the bleeding, but Dekka waved the shirt away. "You're lucky, you were in morph this time," she said to Francis. "If you can de-morph, you'll be fine." As Dekka watched, Francis shifted back to her usual pink skin, and indeed, the puncture wounds began to close.

Edilio came back carrying a plate of bagels and various pastries (the first food he had found), and he tossed the tray in front of Justin who set in on the pastries like a rabid dog on a piece of meat.

Shade kept a weary eye on Justin, and Cruz was glancing worriedly at the rest of the group. She was the first to notice that they weren't all there.

"Where's Armo?" she asked fearfully. At Cruz's words, Sam suddenly realized someone else was missing, and added, "Where's Astrid?"

Sam and Cruz locked eyes with each other, and then their eyes were pulled towards Sam's tether that had previously linked him to Francis. It was cut. He was only here because Francis had blinked out at the exact moment Knightmare had cut his cord. But there were two other severed cords. Armo and Astrid had clearly not been so lucky as Sam had.

"They're still Over There!" Sam exclaimed suddenly.

"With the tiger!" Cruz added, horrified.

Cruz looked urgently at Francis, but hesitated, afraid to ask the young girl to jump back into danger right after so narrowly escaping it, but just as afraid of what might be happening to Armo, unseen, Over There. But it was Francis who said, "Shade? If I get you Over There, do you think you can grab Armo and Astrid and get back to me before that, that _thing,_ attacks again?"

"Schrödingrf," Justin clarified, voice muffled by a mouthful of bagel. Shade glared daggers at him. As soon as his belly was full, Knightmare could very easily pose a threat again.

Dekka saw Shade's glare. She, still morphed, raised her hands to point them back at Justin. "Go. If this one tries anything, I'll shred him." Then she snarled to Justin, "You did say that we could kill you as long as we fed you first, right?"

Shade nodded to signify she was ready, just a rapid vibration of her head to everyone else. They all unclipped their tethers from Francis. Shade looped her tether around her shoulder like a lasso. Francis grabbed her shoulder, and they were gone.

It wouldn't be long before they were back, just a couple seconds, but that was long enough for Dekka to make a grim realization.

Justin DeVeere, Knightmare, now knew where their "secret" base was. If they let him go, then they could not stay here. They could have maybe kept a normal human as a prisoner, but they had zero hope of keeping Knightmare locked up, not with that sword of his. His sword could cut through any material without any resistance, or at the very least, Dekka had never witnessed anything slowing that blade down.

The only other option was to kill Knightmare here and now. Even as desperate as things had become, and even as many people as Knightmare had killed apparently without remorse, Dekka did not like the thought of murdering someone in cold blood.

Dekka sighed. It had been a nice lair, while it lasted. But, if Future-Malik came through on his promise, they would no longer need to exist within this reality at all.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: MEET THE ICE MAN

Schrödinger realized too late that the rainbow-skinned girl had escaped. He howled his rage and barreled towards the two targets left to him. Armo and Astrid.

Justin, the worm, had betrayed him. Knightmare had escaped with the rainbow-skinned girl and left Schrödinger here!

Schrödinger altered course and charged right for Astrid, who at first glance appeared to be the weaker target of the two. Before he got the chance to find out that he was wrong, however, he was hit from the side by a white blur. Armo barreled heedlessly into him, almost mindless in the berserk frenzy of battle, ripping and clawing at the tiger. But Schrödinger spun with liquid grace and bit and clawed right back. The two of them, a savage whirlwind of roars and fur and blood, still had all of the momentum of Schrödinger's initial charge, and flew forward into Astrid anyway.

Astrid was too shocked to react, watching the strange mess of frenzied creatures turned inside out, guts and bones and nervous systems visible as they fought. She could see the surges of adrenaline that powered their frenzy. She could see the way Schrödinger's near-starved hunger sharpened his focus, could see it in the form of nerve signals, his desperation lending him a kind of predatory strength. She could even see their hidden human forms, comically mimicking the motions of the much larger beasts alongside them. She barely registered the fact that the tiger-morph seemed to be missing his hind legs. He didn't act injured, in fact he somehow acted as though all of his limbs were intact. He was running and leaping and even kicking with legs that weren't there. Was that just a visual effect of the extra-dimensional funhouse they were currently trapped in?

She was too bewildered by the incomprehensible sights to dodge out of the way, not even in one of the extra directions that existed only in this place. But it turned out she didn't need to dodge. She tensed the muscles of her Hulk-like morphed form, but she barely even _felt_ the impact of at least a thousand pounds of brawling big cat and polar bear slamming into her. Which was impossible, of course. But, that particular word had meant very little to her for a very long time now.

Her impossibly stable and unyielding body acted like a wedge, cleaving the two fighting beasts apart with their own momentum, with Schrödinger being thrown brutally to her right and Armo tumbling out of control to her left. For a moment, seemingly because of the angle at which she was looking at them, they briefly resolved into solid creatures as they spiraled away.

They might have been an unstoppable force, but, apparently, she was an immovable object. _Cool_, she thought, despite herself. _I always wondered which of those would win._

Schrödinger recovered almost instantly from the impact with Astrid, and was back up in a flash, his muscles tensing visibly under/alongside his fur. Armo was slower to stagger to his feet, but as the tiger charged towards him again, Armo held out his paw-like hands, palms pointed at Schrödinger, and loosed a terrifying roar that came out like a blue-and-grey storm cloud. He wasn't sure what had prompted him to point his hands at Schrödinger like that, but as he roared, bright blue electricity crackled visibly down the nerves in his knuckles, and a flurry of white dust appeared in a wave, quickly crossing the distance between him and the tiger.

It was snow. The air in front of Armo had gotten so cold so quickly that the water vapor had instantly frozen. And it wasn't just the water vapor. Carbon dioxide, too, was falling as dry ice. There were even a few droplets of liquid nitrogen, which almost immediately fizzled and evaporated again in miniscule puffs of steam.

Astrid watched all of this in shock. She had sometimes watched the news, had seen video of Armo, had seen him fight. Never had he displayed a power like this. Nor had he, or any other member of the Rockborn Gang ever mentioned him having the power to project a wave of freezing cold. So how on Earth . . .

The wave of cold reached Schrödinger and the big cat howled in pain. It had been only a quick burst, otherwise he would have been frozen completely through, but even as it was, his own movements very suddenly shattered parts of his skin. His frozen skin burst from his body in swaths, breaking like glass, exploding like red and pink fireworks! His face and front paws had taken the brunt of the blast, and the skin there was gone. Not just neatly separated in extra dimensions from the muscles and bones beneath, but broken completely away. Leaving jagged ridges of muscle, like crystals made of flesh, on his face and arms.

Armo, just as shocked as Astrid, screamed in pure terror and stared at his own paws. How? How had he done this? He knew for a fact that he hadn't had this power before. He'd roared at his foes dozens of times, but he had never _frozen_ anyone.

But then, perhaps just as shockingly, Schrödinger already no longer seemed to be in pain. Astrid could see his mind and nerve endings, which confirmed that he felt none of the agony of his skin being ripped away. Even with his face a halloween mask of muscle and bone, he had only briefly hesitated before charging forward again. Acting as though he wasn't even injured! He should have been crippled!

Astrid felt a gust of wind. Shade! Astrid de-morphed so that the speed demon could grab her, and immediately felt herself yanked off her feet and flying through the funhouse of disassembled steel tunnels at incomprehensible speed. She blinked once and she was next to Francis.

Astrid's sudden vanishing cut right through Schrödinger's rage, and he instantly figured out what was happening. He'd been expecting it. He forgot all about Armo and instead sprinted with every ounce of speed he had towards Francis, with Armo chasing behind but with little hope of catching the tiger. "De-morph!" Astrid heard Shade yell at the charging Armo. There was a very angry roar of defiance. "If-you-could-PLEASE-demorph-I-would-verymuch-APPRECIATE-it!" Shade was speaking as fast as she could to still be understood, but she was still losing precious seconds thanks to Armo's innate inability to obey an order.

Schrödinger was halfway to Francis already. Armo finally de-morphed, in what seemed to Shade like painfully slow motion. The instant his human form was more tangible than the bear, she slammed into him and raced back to Francis.

Shade was hundreds of times faster than Schrödinger, but the tiger had gotten a huge head start while Shade had slowed down to argue with Armo. Schrödinger was mere inches away from Francis when Shade, still carrying Armo, looped her tether around Francis and Astrid and picked them up in one instantaneous motion, speeding all three of them a safe distance away.

Schrödinger slashed at empty air, as all four of his targets vanished back into the real world.

He was alone.


	7. Purple Moleskine 1

**From the purple moleskine:**

_I've had so much on my mind lately, and so little time to write, that I almost don't know where to start. But I have to try. I feel like if I leave all these thoughts inside my head I'll lose my mind._

_Today I went to the dimension that Francis calls "Over There" for the first time. So much craziness happened that I feel like I'm surely focusing on the wrong thing, but, well, I finally saw my own morph._

_I didn't even realize I had a morphed form. Every time I morph, I instantly project another image around me. Empty space when I turn invisible, or someone else's body that I've memorized. I was beginning to think I didn't even have a morphed form._

_But I do. Over There you can see everything, even underneath illusions._

_I look kind of silvery, a dark silver, like mercury. I'm streamlined, precise, almost robotic-looking, but still obviously biological. But the weirdest thing is that I'm covered with these little glass orbs, like pebbles on a cobblestone road. They're kind of sunken into my skin, deep enough that I never felt them before, but now that I know they're there, I notice that my arms do have a slightly scaly texture when I touch them in morph. There seems to be a dim multicolored light that comes from the depths of my body, visible only through those orbs. Like projector bulbs. That's what they remind me of. Like some kind of biological projectors. Which makes a lot of sense. Or it would, if ANYTHING about any of this made sense.  
_

_But why am I still, even now, fretting about what I look like? It's not like any of this is real, anyway. I know I shouldn't start thinking like that, but how can I not?_

_I haven't gotten a chance to write since we first found out we only exist in a simulation. On the one hand, that's so utterly crazy and feels so unreal that I can't even wrap my mind around it. We've all been going along as if this is all still real, as if we still matter. Maybe it's because we have to, because pain and suffering are still real. But maybe it's also because we can't quite accept the truth.  
_

_On the other hand, though, it's almost a relief. It was the only explanation for all of this insanity that could ever have made any sense. Of COURSE it's not real. Of COURSE it was only a dream._

_Well, it would have been a relief, if WE were the ones dreaming. That's the whole problem, though, isn't it? This isn't OUR dream. We can never wake up. If the dreamer, that insane AI, wakes, we will die._

_I can't decide if I want to meet the AI. I suppose it probably won't be my own decision, when or if it comes. But people have been trying to talk to God for a very long time, and as far as we know, nobody ever has. That's what the AI is, after all. There's no other word for it.  
_

_Which is scarier? Meeting your creator? Or knowing that you never will?_


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: IT'S JUST THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

Dekka paced. They had to wait while Future-Malik created their new lair, and in the meantime, they had one enemy that they had to keep constant surveillance on, and another enemy locked and slowly starving in another dimension. Francis had managed to bring enough food Over There that Schrödinger would not actually starve, but each time she had gone, he had tried to attack, and each time she had only narrowly escaped.

And those two were some of the _least_ powerful mutants that the ASO virus had created. There were hundreds more enemies out there, and the numbers were growing minute by minute. They couldn't keep playing the small game of fighting one or two Rockborn at a time. Not when there were seven-hundred-and-some others. Maybe even eight-hundred by now. They _had_ to get to the source.

But none of them had any idea how to do that.

Dekka growled as she continued to pace. They had been taking shifts to guard their prisoner, and it was her turn to keep an eye on Justin for a while. At least so far, he had very wisely decided not to cause trouble. He kept to himself, in the corner of his small and barren cell. But that didn't quite make guarding him easy. Dekka had to stay morphed, which meant enduring the inscrutable gaze of the Dark Watchers, probing in her mind. She knew now that they were merely human beings, so why did their dark tendrils still feel so vile?

She forcefully ignored them, reminding herself that there were more pressing issues. Armo's unexplained acquisition of a never-before-seen power presented a whole new problem. If he could suddenly and for seemingly no reason gain a brand new power, this much time after he had taken the rock, then what was stopping other mutants from gaining new powers as well?

Dekka glared at Justin, wondering whether he too might experience a sudden power surge. What new power might he gain? Armo's new power had been related to his form. Polar bear, ice power, it made some amount of sense. As much as _any_ of this could ever make sense.

If function followed form, would Knightmare's sword become able to cut at a distance, to slice objects apart with a mere thought? Or would it become sharper, able to slice at a molecular level, cleaving substances apart into their constituent elements?

If he learned how to slice _atoms_ apart, well, that would be extremely bad. He could then generate nuclear explosions at will, and that was something Dekka did not even want to think about. _Leave that train of thought to Astrid,_ she told herself.

"Speak of the devil," she whispered to herself with a wry smile, as a morphed Astrid walked into the cell. Dekka breathed a sigh of relief and gratefully de-morphed. Her shift was over. It was Astrid's turn to guard Justin for a while. "Good luck," Dekka told Astrid.

Dekka wandered for a bit, eventually finding her way to the "panic room" which had been converted into a sort of a lounge area for the Rockborn Gang. The couches and easy chairs and even the large-screen television set seemed small against the grey-painted metal walls of the huge, fortified room.

Sam was there, sitting in front of the television on a couch, clutching the remote control to his chest and seeming almost to vibrate with barely suppressed rage. He was watching what seemed to be amateur footage, perhaps from a cellphone camera. The scroll at the bottom of the screen tagged it as somewhere in Afghanistan. The footage was of grotesque corpses, looking like people that had been turned inside out, organs and viscera held only loosely together in the approximate shape of human beings, blood oozing out and pooling around the bodies.

Dekka screamed.

One of the corpses had moved.

The video shook wildly and spiraled downward, as whoever was filming dropped, or perhaps threw, their cellphone. The video briefly flashed across a monstrous red-and-white streaked creature with enormous clawed hands and the bony face of a demon, but then the view of the camera was filled only with red.

Sam had looked at Dekka when she screamed, the still-healing scar on his face (a remnant of the final battle with Vector) lending a hardened intensity to his features. But, then again, that look may not have been entirely due to the scar.

Dekka slowly and rigidly locked eyes with Sam, and suddenly she could see from the hollow look in his eyes that this was not the first time he had seen this video. She pictured him rewinding and playing it over and over. Torturing himself with his own helplessness against whatever had done this.

They needed to get to the source of _all_ of this, Dekka reminded herself one more time. They couldn't, they just _couldn't_ go after every single thing like Vector or whatever this new evil called itself. Not with seven-or-eight-hundred mutants and more every day. They needed to get to the source! Even if they had no idea how. They couldn't risk getting themselves killed, when they were the only ones who stood a chance at fixing the world.

"It's just the FAYZ," Dekka said, her voice quavering. "It's just the FAYZ." It was something that those trapped in the FAYZ used to say. Sort of an admission that the world around them was falling apart, but that there wasn't anything anyone could do about it. _It's just the world we live in._

Sam frowned in bewilderment. "It's just the-?!" he suddenly raged, standing up. He switched off the television. "We can't just sit here and watch this happen! Simulation or not, suffering and pain and fear are all just as real as they ever were, and we might be the only ones who can, who can . . . " His voice was choked off by a sob as he realized he didn't even know what he thought he could do, against this fresh horror. He found his breath again quickly, like he _needed_ to continue. To make Dekka understand.

"It isn't just him. They're saying he still has some of the rock, and he's using it to recruit followers. He's giving powers to anyone who swears loyalty to him. There's already a telekinetic who could have stomped Caine on his best day. The guy apparently picked up a whole town and dropped it, like the robot in that Marvel movie. And then there's a guy who can shoot acid, acid that eats through anything. Acid-guy just accidentally made a _volcano_ because enough of the acid ate so far down through the Earth that the hole freaking reached _lava_. And the main guy, Flesh-Ripper they're calling him, his powers apparently even affect morphs. A bunch of his followers betrayed him, or maybe they only pretended to follow him long enough to get powers so that they could try to take him down, I don't know." He looked at Dekka pleadingly. "They were just kids, Dekka. No older than we were in the FAYZ. Just a bunch of Afghani and Pakistani _kids_, and they tried to . . . and then he . . . "

Apparently exhausted by the speech, Sam crashed back down into his seat, as though his body suddenly weighed a thousand pounds, and held his head in his hands. "It's like a hydra, isn't it?" he said. "All of this. You cut off one head, and three more just grow in its place."

Sam was still School Bus Sam, Dekka realized sadly. Still the same Sam who, no matter how badly he wanted to simply live his life, could never sit on the sidelines and watch while disaster struck. He _had_ to jump into danger whenever he thought nobody else would. It was still, even now, such a part of who he was. And not being able to do anything while the world unraveled was killing him inside.

Dekka realized that there were tears in her eyes. _She_ was the one making him sit on the sidelines and watch while people suffered, even though she didn't like it any more than he did. But Shade had very nearly died taking Vector down, and if they kept fighting the hydra's heads, one of them _would_ die next time. And they might need every last one of them for, well, for whatever came next.

"It's just the FAYZ," she repeated, more firmly this time, though her voice stayed gentle. "When your entire world is falling apart, you can't always go after the Drakes or Zils or even the Caines. You have to take the fight to Gaia. You have to kill the Darkness."

Sam, trying but failing to blink the tears from his own eyes, nodded. "The Darkness. Yeah. At least back then, we had some idea where, if not what, it was. It was at least a physical thing, you know? But, this AI, this stupid thing that built our world piece by piece only to take it all apart again, it could be anywhere. Anything. For all we know, it could be _everything_. For all we know, every atom of our world, of our universe, could combine to form the neurons of the mind of God."

"Been talking to Astrid, huh?" Dekka said. Sam nodded and smiled a sad smile.

They both just sat for a while, just leaning against one another and crying softly. Neither saying anything. Just absorbing the silence around them, and letting that silence absorb them.

"I wonder if-" Dekka finally started to say, but was interrupted by a distant booming sound that reverberated down through the underground facility. They both jumped about a foot, and looked at each other with animal expressions of pure terror.

They were both thinking the exact same thing. Was this . . . it? Had some Rockborn mutant acquired a power so great and terrible that the Earth itself was now splitting apart? Or had someone gained the power to create devastating explosions of enormous magnitude, and now they were wiping cities off of the map, one by one?

Sam clicked the TV back on, and scrolled through the channels that were connected to cameras outside the facility. Aboveground views.

Dekka breathed a shaky, but deep, sigh of relief. It was raining outside. They were too deep underground to hear the pitter patter of rain, but not so deep that they didn't hear the thunder.

Thunder. It was only thunder. They were not facing Armageddon.

Yet.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: THE FINAL FRONTIER

Simone flew, up and up and up. Impossibly high above the world below. Trees shrank until they blended into an endless carpet of green, buildings shrank until they vanished entirely. She had carefully sidestepped the rain clouds, nervous about lightning, and now she safely saw them from above, pillars of grey like solid things, occasionally flashing with brilliant lights. Lakes and rivers looked like tiny blue or brown mirrors, and soon she could see the sparkling edge of the ocean creeping into view.

She knew that what she was doing was probably foolish, possibly even dangerous. But if the world really was ending, she needed to see it, as it was, just one time, before the end.

She still composed her thoughts like movies in her head. _Zoom out on the Earth, until the curving edge of the world can be seen. Out and out until the atmosphere is just a blue haze against the stars._

She could, in fact, faintly see stars above her now, beyond the darkening blue of the sky. She realized that she ought to be having difficulty breathing, with the atmosphere as thin as it was up here. But, instead, she found that her morphed form merely needed to breathe less and less. Instead of the regular "in, out, in, out" of breath, it was "In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out." She didn't even need to think about it, her morph had simply adapted.

As the world fell away beneath her, the sky continued to darken. She finally breached the atmosphere like a dolphin jumping out of the water. She realized that she could not possibly still be flying, with no air for her hundreds of tiny wings to beat against, but nevertheless, there she hovered, in defiance of gravity. Impossible. She was in space! She didn't even feel _cold_. She didn't even need to breathe. Well, not right now, anyway. She knew she'd need to dive back into the atmosphere to take a breath in, oh, maybe an hour or so. But the need was far from urgent.

The sun was still out, meaning it should have been daytime, but the sun itself was just another star in the pitch dark sky. She had thought she'd wanted to see the Earth, but she now felt her gaze drawn upward instead of down.

_Pan across the starry sky, Simone a tiny silhouette in the foreground, dwarfed by the enormity of the Milky Way behind her._

The Milky Way Galaxy. Living in New York City for most of her life, she had never seen the stars like this. They were so beautiful. But they were more than that. They were beautiful in the same way that a deadly cobra could be beautiful. Beautiful, but strangely dangerous. It was from those stars that all of Simone's problems had come. All of the Rockborn Gang's problems.

All of the _world's_ problems.

No, Simone supposed, that last one wasn't quite true. The world had had problems long before the ASOs had started falling. But the ASOs had brought all the pre-existing evils of the world into stark relief. Those terrible meteorites had given _power_ to evil.

As she watched, she spotted a shooting star falling to Earth. Was it just a rock? Or was it yet another piece of _the_ rock? An innocent shooting star on which she might make a wish? Or another toxic bullet, fired without mercy into an already-wounded world?

Her human form still bore the scars of those toxic bullets. Like little craters in her own flesh.

She looked across the sky, no longer looking at the entire array of stars, but focusing instead on individual points of light. Somewhere out there, much farther than she could ever hope to fly to, was the place where this had all started. Where _they_ had come from. If only she could fly farther, fly higher, if only she could ever hope to cross the immense distances of space . . . she would find . . .

Suddenly, it all clicked into place, a realization so enormous that she forgot to breathe. Well, no, she already wasn't breathing, hadn't been breathing for a while now. But her breath would have caught in her chest if there had been anything there.

They, the Rockborn Gang, had been searching for a way to contact the AI, the thing that had sent the ASOs to Earth. But they were all looking in the wrong place, they were all looking _on Earth_. As if it could ever be reached from this one tiny speck of blue-green hidden away at the edge of the infinite universe.

With a certainty that stunned her, she realized she knew where it was. Where it _had_ to be. Simone knew Shade's story, knew how she had stolen data and had traced the path of one of the ASOs to a desolate farm in Iowa. But if an ASO could be traced forward, then it could also be traced _back_. They could find out where it had come from, as long as Shade remembered the exact trajectory. And with her obsessive memory and scary intelligence, Simone had no doubt that she would.

If the AI had a physical form, and granted that was still a worryingly big "if," then that's where it would be.

Filled with hope and dread in equal measure, Simone dove back to Earth as fast as she could, plummeting down through the atmosphere so fast she worried her fragile wings might ignite from the friction.

The mad AI, the thing that had created this world, the thing that might be God, was up there, in the heavens. It was almost poetic.

_Tilt from close to ground level, following Simone's fall back to Earth from the top of the atmosphere, moving the camera slow at first then faster as she zooms with newfound urgency into view._

_Voiceover: It was not too late to save the world. I knew the way._


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: THE LONG ROAD TO NOWHERE

Simone was right about one thing, Shade did remember the trajectory of ASO-3. That, it turned out, was the easy part.

It also turned out that there were two hard parts. The first was revealed when Shade used her finger to trace the path of ASO-3 on a computer monitor showing a map of the Milky Way Galaxy.

"No stars," she said flatly, pointing at a big region of empty space between two arms of the spiral galaxy for emphasis. "There is no star or star system that the ASOs could conceivably have come from. I managed to get the trajectories of the other ASOs from our good friend Eliopoulos, and, well, same thing. They all shared the same original path before hitting our solar system, and they all came from that exact same region of utterly blank space. Even the other galaxies in our local cluster don't match the path, so it probably didn't come from another galaxy. Whatever it is, it either came from some random drifting exoplanet, that is, a planet without a star . . . or . . . "

"A black hole," Malik finished coolly, showing little emotion. "Or at least a planet orbiting one. Starless regions of space are often a sign of black holes. Any star that gets too close gets sucked in and destroyed, ergo, a black hole would usually have this kind of void near it."

"Then how would a planet be orbiting it?" Dekka pointed out.

Shade shrugged. "It's just a guess, but, a planet could be orbiting far enough away, or else fast enough, to escape the black hole's gravity." She sighed. "Of course, black holes usually form by a star going supernova. Which would likely have destroyed anything on the planet, assuming the planet was orbiting the star before that. The alternative is that the black hole picked up the planet later, which just brings us back to it having been a random exoplanet wandering about."

"The supernova idea might actually make some sense," Astrid said thoughtfully. "Whatever lives on the ASOs generally appears to be able to feed on radiation, so a supernova might have kick-started-"

"Lives on? Feeds on?" Simone interrupted, looking distinctly nauseous. "That stuff is _alive_?" She stared uneasily at the still-visible pockmarks in her skin.

"Maybe," Astrid said. "Or maybe more like a virus, where it's kind of alive, but not really."

That added explanation very clearly did not improve Simone's queasiness. She looked like she wanted to start digging the long-absorbed fragments out of her skin with her fingernails.

Shade sighed again, deeper this time. "Black hole or exoplanet, both of those possibilities are fiendishly hard to detect," she said. "We can only find black holes because of the way they warp the light of stars, so we would have to wait for a star to pass right behind it before we could see it. And exoplanets are even worse. It would have to be big enough to dim the light of a star that it passes in front of, and even that's only if we get really lucky. It's like we're looking for a needle in a haystack, only we're blindfolded. We know the path, but not _where_ along that path, the ASOs came from." She leaned back in her swivel chair, looking up at the ceiling. "I _would_ say we could just follow the path and we'd know it once we got to it, but . . . "

Which hinted at the second "hard part" of this whole discussion. How to get there. Even the very most modern spacecraft weren't built to take human beings much farther than Earth's orbit. There had still never even been a manned mission to Mars, let alone out of the solar system. And with civilization crumbling, funding space exploration was not high on anyone's list of priorities.

So, the only viable option was to try to make use of the Rockborn Gang's own powers, but even that was dubious. Simone could apparently survive in space for a while, but nowhere near long enough to get anywhere. And in any case, she couldn't help the rest of them. Sam could create airtight force-field bubbles that would allow all of them to survive in space, but he could not cause his bubbles to move on their own, let alone move them at the speeds needed to reach wherever they were going before they all ran out of air. The only one of them capable of reaching even supersonic speed, which still wasn't nearly fast enough to cross the immense vastness of space, was Shade. And, needless to say, she could not _run_ in space. Dekka's, Cruz's, Armo's, Malik's, and Astrid's powers were completely useless against this.

Which left Francis. She was the one member of the Rockborn Gang whose powers they all seemed to rely on again and again. She could do more than just travel through space, she could escape three-dimensional space altogether. Take an even shorter path than a straight line between point A and point B.

But even for her, it would be a massive undertaking. It would be like going from one side of the world to the other (already something she had never even dared to try) about a billion times over. Not to mention that the air in n-dimensional space had to come from three-dimensional space. The vacuum of space would be just as deadly to her as it was to anyone (except perhaps Simone and Sam).

Francis felt everyone's eyes resting on her after Shade had let her last statement hang. And so, even knowing the danger and the absolute impossibility of what the others didn't dare ask of her out loud, Francis grinned and stepped forward, signalling her willingness, even eagerness, to try.

She had a pair of shooter's earmuffs around her neck, Dekka noticed. She'd just come from the firing range. She'd been learning how to handle a gun.

Even though Dekka had been no stranger to guns herself at Francis's age, it was still a jarring image.

"It will take a lot of practice, and I mean, a LOT of practice, with my powers. But I feel like I'll eventually be able to make a kind of wormhole," she said. She looked for Armo for a moment, before remembering he was currently guarding Knightmare's cell. "It'd sure be nice to know where Armo's power boost came from, since I could really use one right about now," she said. Then Francis looked at Sam. "I'm going to need your force fields, so you'd better practice with your powers, too."

Sam nodded, clearly trying to hide some lingering uneasiness. Even after all these years, it seemed, he was still leery of the dark. And that empty black void of space, where they would be headed right into the heart of, looked very, _very _dark. "Easy peasy," he said with a smirk of false bravado. "I can make all the force fields you need."

Malik cocked a skeptical eyebrow at Sam. "You already know how to make n-dimensional force fields, then? Spheres in more than three dimensions? A three-dimensional sphere won't be airtight Over There."

The false-bravado smirk instantly disappeared. "Oh," Sam said dully. "Okay, so maybe I could use a little practice, too."

Dekka smiled at Francis, appreciating her bravery, but then sighed. The need for "power-practice" represented yet _another_ delay. They knew now more-or-less how to save the world, but who knew how long it would be before they actually could? In the meantime, the hydra eating the world was only growing more and more heads.

And even after they reached wherever the ASOs came from, then what? Would they be able to reason with, or defeat, the thing that was doing this?

Too many questions. But Dekka could feel everyone's eyes turning towards her, wanting answers.

"Okay, well, first things first," she said tersely. "Before you two can start practicing anything 'Over There,' we need to let a certain unhappy _cat_ out of the n-dimensional bag."


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: A CHANGE OF HEART

Edilio was in the kitchen behind the facility's mess hall, cooking up an array of meat. All different kinds, from steak to bacon to hotdogs to chicken.

It all smelled amazing.

Justin had told the Rockborn Gang a bit about what Schrödinger liked. His tiger instincts had blended with his human tastes until all he craved was meat. He wouldn't want it raw, he was still human enough to be repulsed by the thought. But, meat. It was all he had talked about for days while he and Justin had slowly starved.

It was still a risky plan. Even half-starving, Schrödinger might have the presence of mind to ignore the food and go for Francis instead. But Dekka thought that was unlikely. She knew what starvation felt like. She knew how hard it would be to ignore salvation from that pain, even when you knew that you were acting against your own best interest. At some point instinct takes over. At some point, intelligent thought cannot override the primitive urge for food.

They needed to get past Schrödinger first, before they could release him back into the "real world." They would escape to safety in the dimension that Future-Malik had crafted for them (they were blindly counting on him having finished creating that pocket reality by now, but there was no way to make sure before they launched their plan). Only then, and only if Schrödinger didn't follow them, would they send Francis and Shade to play round two of the highest-stakes game of "tag" that either of them had ever played in their lives.

"I wonder what will happen when Schrödinger shows up in the real world?" Francis wondered, unconsciously making a happy face towards the delicious smells coming from the kitchen.

"If all goes to plan, none of us will be hanging around long enough to find out," Dekka said wearily.

"I just mean . . . you know, his injuries. I can't tell if it's an effect of Over There, or if it's something to do with his powers, but you know how he looks injured but doesn't act it?" Francis said, obviously concerned. "If it is just a side-effect of Over There, then the instant he pops into the real world, those injuries would become real. He'd die in seconds. There's no way he could de-morph in time."

Dekka blew out a loud sigh. "You're feeling sorry for him? Need I remind you that he worked for Vector. Vector, who infected a man with every disease known and hung him on the wall as a display. The guy you're feeling sorry for, saw that horrorshow, and thought, 'Yeah, this Vector guy seems alright, I wanna help him!' Save your sympathy."

Francis shot Dekka a hard look. "We know _nothing_ of his motivations. And I'm not saying he's a saint. But he also isn't Knightmare. As far as we know, Schrödinger hasn't personally killed anyone. And there's a lot of people who ain't saints that sure don't deserve to die, either." Francis's eyes widened. She looked like she'd just caught herself cursing in front of her parents. It was the first time she had really spoken her mind against one of the other members of the Rockborn Gang, Dekka realized.

Good. It was about time she got over her hero worship and realized that they were all at the big kids' table together.

"Look, I'm glad you care. We need people who care about other people," Dekka said gently. "But Schrödinger cannot live Over There forever. Sooner or later, he will have to come over into the real world. And he's already on borrowed time. He's gotten a lot more time than he would have had, _should_ have had, to live. Just . . . please remember that you weren't the one who gave him the injuries that killed him. That was Armo . . . and, me." Dekka sighed again. "If he dies, _you_ did not kill him. _I_ did."

That did not appear to make Francis feel any better. She looked sadly at Dekka. But before she had time to say anything-

"Dinner's up!" Edilio called from the kitchen.

It was time.

Schrödinger could smell the meat cooking, even from Over There. His mouth watered. He was no longer quite on the verge of starvation, Francis had managed to sneak him enough food to make sure of that, but he was still plenty hungry enough to salivate in anticipation of the smorgasbord of meat.

It took some practice to be able to hear sounds in the "real world" from n-dimensional space, let alone interpret speech, but Schrödinger had had many long days with nothing to do but to eavesdrop on strangers. So, by now, he knew all about the Rockborn Gang's oh-so-clever little plan for him. And he'd caught enough snatches of Francis and Dekka's conversation to get the jist of their concerns, as well.

He had not even begun to consider, before Francis had brought it up, what _would_ actually happen to him when he got back to the real world. "He'd die in seconds," that's what Francis had said. That was only if his injuries stayed "real," while whatever was keeping them from actually affecting him ended. But that probably wouldn't happen. No, no, it certainly wouldn't happen. He was Schrödinger! Alive-and-dead, injured-and-whole!

But, _how_ had he become what he was? Was this his own mutant Rockborn power at work? Or had this girl, this Francis, done this to him?

"Doesn't matter," he muttered angrily to himself. Life or death, he was not willing to spend the rest of his natural lifetime in this hideous limbo realm, this kaleidoscope of reality. Alone. No matter what, he would not die here. No matter what, he would not die _alone_.

If that meant he would die in seconds in the real world, well, then, so be it. He would welcome his death with gratitude.

Schrödinger mentally prepared himself for the arrival of the Rockborn Gang, as the one called Edilio hollered that his dinner was ready. He tensed, ready to . . . but wait, why did he still want to attack? No, no, that would be stupid, and he wasn't stupid. So, instead, the tiger-morph awkwardly sat down, crossing his strangely invisible legs, closing his eyes, and holding out his frost-ravaged bleeding-yet-not-bleeding hands in a gesture of peace. Despite himself, he was smiling.

After all, the Rockborn Gang was mere moments away from giving him everything he wanted. Too little too late, perhaps, but they were at least trying to undo some of the damage that they had done to him. It was very hard to hate them for that.

He had only attacked out of desperation before, he lied to himself, when he'd thought he had no choice but to _force_ them to let him out of this hell they had trapped him in. No choice. He'd had no choice! _They_ had left him no choice.

_Yeah right._ Maybe Dekka was right about him. "Save your sympathy," she had said. With a twisting feeling of guilt, Schrödinger made himself acknowledge that he, desperate and acting on instinct though he may have been, had attacked a young girl. A girl who had, in turn, risked several more attacks just to make sure he wouldn't starve. She'd had no reason to care about his well-being, and yet, she had.

That was the thing that had stuck with him. No matter how many times he had pounced at her with clawed hands outstretched, no matter how many times her friends had told her she was being an idiot and to stay the hell out of n-dimensional space, she had kept sneaking back with as much food as she had been able to smuggle away unnoticed. She had fed him like he was an angry stray cat, completely ignoring the fact that he had kept trying to bite the literal hand that fed him. And now she was even worried that he might die. He, who had done nothing but hurt her. Yet still she cared whether he lived or died.

It reminded him of . . . but Schrödinger shook his head savagely. Clearing away memories that were still far too painful to touch.

He _had_ to show them that he had no reasons left to fight. He and the Gang would never be friends, perhaps.

But maybe they still had time to be something better than enemies.


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter 11: THE LAST SAFEHOUSE

The Rockborn Gang had been so certain that Schrödinger would attack, as he had already done several times before. So, the group was on edge, ready for a mad dash through n-dimensional space and a fight for their lives.

It took them a moment to even spot the tiger-morph, as still as he was. He just sat there, eyes closed, in a sitting posture that was so unlike a cat. As much as he tried to be calm, however, he could not quiet the tension in his muscles, and that tension was visible to all. His fight-or-flight adrenaline rush was surging, and that, too, could be seen in this place.

If he had been trying to put the group at ease, his sudden shift in behavior instead had almost the exact opposite effect. Their eyes darted around suspiciously, expecting traps or ambushes around every, well, one would normally say "corner" but even the _idea_ of a blind corner was an impossibility in this place.

"I mean you no harm!" he said quickly when he saw them. "I only-"

"No harm?" Dekka interrupted skeptically. Her voice had the harsh edge of pent-up adrenaline, her own fight-or-flight instinct surging across her body. She gave a signal with her hand and the group set down the food they were carrying. "Where on Earth could we have ever gotten the _absurd_ idea that you meant us _harm_?"

"You have no reason to trust me," Schrödinger began again, edging hungrily towards the food.

"Damn right," Shade interjected.

"But I want out of this place, which is the same thing you've now decided you want for me," Schrödinger continued as though Shade hadn't spoken. "I'm not just some rabid animal, okay? I'm not stupid. If you're going to let me out, and I have no reason to think you're lying, then why _wouldn't_ I cooperate?"

"You eavesdropped on us?" Malik said. He sounded more impressed than angry.

"Then you know what might happen when you land in the real world," Dekka said before Schrödinger could get a word in edgewise.

Schrödinger shrugged and took a steak out of one of the containers without even bothering to open the lid. He just let it sort of phase through. "Still better than staying here. I'm willing to flip that coin. Take my chances." He looked down at his mangled body. "I don't _feel_ like I'll die," he said, but somehow it sounded unconvincing when he said it out loud.

Schrödinger couldn't wait any longer. He tore into the steak, and it was easily the best thing he had ever tasted. The savory meat seemed to melt in his mouth. He waved a hand at the Rockborn Gang in a shooing motion, telling them to move along.

"Huh," Dekka said uncertainly. She was still twitching with energy, expecting the battle that hadn't come. "That was . . . huh."

They all gave a sort of collective shrug, not knowing what else they could do, and moved on, Shade and Dekka still keeping a wary eye on Schrödinger as they moved away. Leaving him well behind, they then moved towards the grey circle that would lead them back to Future-Malik, and more importantly to the realm of simulated reality that he could control.

They were putting an awful lot of faith in Future-Malik, Dekka thought uneasily. He could pretty much do whatever he wanted to the Rockborn Gang. They were fully depending on the fact that he had no reason to want to kill or torture simulated people that he had, albeit in a roundabout way, created.

Dekka didn't like that, didn't like putting herself and her friends completely at another's mercy, let alone someone they barely knew. Although they were familiar with their own version of Malik, he was not his alternate-universe doppelganger.

But what other choice was there?

The Rockborn Gang emerged, not into blank white space as they had before, but into a roomy lobby, with warm eggshell-colored walls and soft-looking couches and easy chairs, and a television that nearly filled one wall. The rest of the walls all had doors, three or four doors to a wall. The doors ranged from utilitarian to ornate. Eleven doors in all.

One door for each member of the Rockborn Gang. And one more door after that.

Future-Malik was nowhere to be seen. So the Gang unclipped themselves from Francis and set about exploring their newest home.

Sam pushed open a weather-worn door whose screened panels made it seem light and airy, and immediately heard the soft shushing sound of crashing waves beyond. His requested "room" opened onto a beach, with a little bungalow for him to sleep and work out, but otherwise just sand and waves.

Astrid, meanwhile, opened the most ornate of the doors, which seemed to be carved out of marble. Her "room" was immaculately neat, stacked high with books on everything from quantum physics to theology. It looked more like a library than a living space.

Edilio's door and room were practical, utilitarian. He hadn't requested much, only what he needed. But he had another door, and from there he had access to an armory and firing range. Just in case.

Simone's room looked almost like a movie set, with lighting she could adjust, and cameras on tracks. Not that she really thought she'd have the time to make movies while she was here, but hey, maybe. And other than the light that gave it that movie-set quality, it was a standard, if somewhat fancy, New-York-style apartment.

Armo's was an elaborate lounge, decadent and splendid, surrounding a pool. He had felt quite inspired by the accommodations in Las Vegas, it seemed. Sitting "outside" in a parking lot was a nearly perfect recreation of his long-since destroyed orange-and-white Dodge Viper.

Cruz's room connected to Armo's through a secretive back door. But where his was grandiose, she had gone for just a touch more subtlety. She had a small glade, trees and grass and everything, right there in her living room, a hammock strung up between trees. That would be her writing nook. And all around her were windows, looking out into various places in what she still thought of as the "real world," even though she knew that it, too, was a simulation. But even so, she didn't want to be totally disconnected from that world.

Malik's room was sparse, with almost a medical feel to it. Like he was living in a hospital. It was even more utilitarian than Edilio's. Shade peeked her head in over Malik's shoulder, a little confused as to why he would want to live in a place like this. This didn't seem like the Malik she thought she knew. But then again, the Malik she knew had changed, more than any of them. Even Shade didn't always know what went on in his mind.

Shade's own space was half relaxed, with a beanbag chair in one corner and a bookshelf with all the books about the FAYZ (plus a DVD of the movie) in another. But the other half had a control-room feel to it, with a row of computer monitors on a long desk along one wall.

Francis's room was small and cozy. Dimly lit, but not in a creepy way. Rather, the dark space had a feeling of warmth and comfort, like being near a fire on a winter evening. She had a beanbag chair, a gaming console, and a small bookshelf that together occupied most of the space.

Dekka's was a simple apartment, not so different from the place she had lived for the past four years. A little nicer, a little cleaner, perhaps, but still austere. She had keepsakes scattered here and there, remnants of her old life.

It was perfect, each member of the Rockborn Gang thought to themselves in turn.

The perfect safehouse, from which to watch the world burn.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: WATCHING THE WORLD BURN

Sam, the first to finish exploring his own quarters, had just started to move towards the eleventh door (an imposing thing made of steel) when Future-Malik suddenly appeared into the lobby, like he had teleported there.

He looked haggard. Wait, but why? Wasn't this version of himself merely an avatar that he could project into the simulation at will? However he looked could only be because he chose to look that way, so for whatever reason, he must have _decided_ to appear as though he hadn't slept in about a week.

Was he trying to seem more human? Or did he not have as much control as they had assumed?

He waited for a few other members of the Rockborn Gang to finish exploring and wander back out of their rooms. Malik was first after Sam, then Edilio. Dekka next. Apparently that was enough.

"The virus is mutating," Future-Malik said, in a voice filled with regret, but loud enough that those still in their rooms might hear. Simone, Astrid, and Shade poked their heads out of their respective doors. "I'm so sorry. I tried to stop it, I tried to write a cure into the program, but-"

"Yeah, we know," Dekka snapped. "One of us got a new power. We know it's mutating."

"No, you don't understand!" Future-Malik shouted suddenly. He paused, regaining his composure. "We have at least a dozen cases of mutant-to-human _transmission._ People who have never even been directly exposed to the ASO. No ingestion, no injection, not hit by shrapnel, _nothing_, who are now suddenly developing morphs and powers. The virus, it's, well, it's doing exactly what regular Earth viruses have always been able to do. It's _spreading_." He cradled his head in his hands. "It isn't all that virulent, yet. But it's only just beginning to mutate. And any kind of quarantine would obviously be impossible to maintain."

Sam had a sudden mental image of the Earth, covered in tiny pinpoints of green. Not a natural green like the surrounding grass and trees covering the imagined globe, but a glowing, sickly, radioactive green. Gaiaphage green.

As he watched, helpless even in his mind's eye, the points began to expand and grow. They grew like cancers, fusing together at their edges into an unbroken blanket of that terrible and deadly green.

The Gaiaphage had finally gotten what it had always wanted, Sam thought grimly. Ever since before the FAYZ, all that terrible viral intelligence had ever wanted was to spread its grotesque influence and power to all corners of the world. They had stopped it. They had fought and sacrificed and so, so many of them had died, but they had stopped it.

Now, Sam saw clearly, it had been for nothing. All that pain and violence and sacrifice and suffering, all of it for nothing!

"Maybe it will be okay," Sam said weakly, knowing that he was grasping at straws even as he spoke. He glanced at the ceiling as he briefly struggled for words. "What's it called, that concept where everyone is powerful enough to blow everyone else up if they wanted to, but nobody actually does it, because they know that if they do they'll get blown up in return?"

"Mutually assured destruction," Astrid supplied, but distantly. "That's called mutually assured destruction."

"Yeah that's it," Sam said with a shuddering sigh. "Mutually assured destruction." He repeated it, as if the phrase itself would make him feel better. It did not. "Maybe, even if everyone gets powers, nobody will kill each other exactly _because_ they know they can all kill each other."

"Yeah. Maybe," Edilio agreed uncertainly. He was staring at his arm as though he didn't quite trust his own skin. He noticed Sam looking at him, and took a shaky breath. "So. It's spreading," he said, trying to hide the alarm, the panic, in his voice. He alone of the Rockborn Gang did not have a morph, did not have powers. He had flatly refused to take the ASO substance that the rest of them had taken. He had wanted to take no part of that harsh reality, the awful responsibility to fight and hurt and kill. That's what this power meant, didn't it? Power meant fighting and killing. And while he might have been a fighter, he was not a killer.

"Yes," Future-Malik answered Edilio simply.

Edilio felt himself almost subconsciously edging towards his own room. Away from the rest of the group. They were contagious, they could infect him, they were . . . but no. _No_. As an immigrant in the United States, he knew precisely how awful it felt to be treated like you were inherently 'dirty.' He would not, could not, treat his friends that way.

Astrid said, "It's okay, Edilio. If you need to isolate yourself, nobody will blame you." It apparently hadn't yet occurred to a couple of the others that Edilio was the only one of them not exposed, and they looked at him with shock and pity, but then quickly nodded their agreement with what Astrid had said.

_That_ did it. "No," Edilio said firmly. "You are all my friends. I will not cut myself off. This isn't some disease, it's just . . . " He drew a blank for what it was "just," so he repeated, "It isn't a disease. For one thing, its permanent. Meaning I'd have to stay away from all of you, permanently. And hey, it isn't like this is something that kills people. Not directly, anyway." He muttered that last part under his breath. Then he shrugged helplessly, a gesture of defeat. "Besides, it's probably too late, right? I've been around you guys for weeks now. If I'm going to get it, chances are I already have."

He looked to Future-Malik, looking for answers, but the man only shrugged. "I can only see those who have morphed," he said. "Morphing is what activates the Dark Watcher subroutine. Affected, or not, without morphing you won't show up to me, either way. That's part of what makes tracking this so difficult."

"Fantastic," Edilio groaned.

Throughout it all, Shade was looking at Future-Malik with a curious but skeptical expression. Maybe she was being cynical, but she couldn't help but wonder why he actually seemed to care so much about this world. So he had figured out that his simulations were all real people with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams or whatever. So he felt guilty about creating them. So what? None of that explained the tired and hollow look in his eyes as he tried desperately to stop yet another nail being driven into the coffin of the world.

What did _he_ have to lose, if this world ended? He was outside the simulation. Safe.

Wasn't he?

_What are you hiding, Malik-from-another-world? What is so important, and yet so terrible, that you would conceal it from us, even now?_

_What secret could possibly be any worse than what we already know?_

* * *

I just wanted to add a little post-script, since I know that a chapter about contagion is a bit poorly timed right now (to be fair I've had the idea since long before I knew about the Coronavirus threat). I tried to write it so that it was clear, but just in case it's not: the ASO virus is not even remotely meant to be a metaphor for the Coronavirus. If you get the Coronavirus, or if you're around people who have it, you should _absolutely_ self-isolate. Don't panic, especially if you're young and healthy. You'll probably be fine. But even if you are young and healthy, please spare a thought for those who aren't. Quarantine measures help keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, which in turn saves lives.


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: SCHRÖDINGER'S FATE

Shade was still warily eyeing Future-Malik when she spotted Francis out of the corner of her eye. Which reminded her that the two of them still needed to deal with Schrödinger. Now that they were ensconced in their new safehouse, it was finally safe to release Schrödinger into the real world. There was little choice but to release him straight into their former lair. In any case, Schrödinger knew where the place was, so there was hardly any point in releasing him anywhere else.

Francis caught Shade's glance, and nodded. She, too, was anxious to get back to more solvable problems than the inevitable Rockborn epidemic the world would soon be facing. But Francis also had something else on her mind. Her nagging concerns about Schrödinger's fate. Suddenly she looked at Future-Malik with an expression of revelation on her face.

"You can see all the Rockborn, right? Well, all except me," she said ruefully. "Can you tell me a bit about the powers of the one called Schrödinger?"

Future-Malik waved a hand in the air, flicking his finger, a gesture like he was scrolling on an invisible touch-screen. After a few seconds, he looked confused. "There is no mutant that calls themselves that. Your world just passed a thousand Rockborn yesterday, and there is not a single one called Schrödinger."

It was Francis's turn to look confused. And she wasn't the only one. "Saber-toothed tiger looking guy?" Dekka pressed.

Future-Malik scrolled some more. "There _was_ a mutant called Bengal Tiger in the New York City area. But he fell off the radar. We assumed he was dead."

Astrid narrowed her eyes, noticing Future-Malik's use of "we" instead of "I." Probably just referring to the other Dark Watchers, she thought. Whoever they were.

Malik (the present, Rockborn Malik) looked like he wanted to smack himself in the forehead. "You can't see into the Over There. None of us can feel the Dark Watchers when we're in n-dimensional space, meaning that you can't see us there."

Future-Malik nodded. "I thought so. We see each of you disappear and reappear regularly. I thought that might be what was happening." His eyes widened. "Bengal Tiger, assuming that's the same mutant, disappeared _weeks_ ago. He's been in n-dimensional space all this time?"

"Yeah," Francis said, sounding guilty. "Yeah, he's been trapped all this time."

"Well, no sense putting it off any longer," Shade said, in a tone of agreement, clapping her hands together once as she spoke. "Let's go."

Shade probably didn't need to come along, now that Schrödinger seemed willing to cooperate with the Rockborn Gang. But, of course, she had insisted, unwilling to allow Francis to go on her own and be defenseless. And Francis, although concerned about Schrödinger, didn't entirely trust him, either.

So, with Shade morphed and ready to yank her to safety at a fraction-of-a-second's notice, Francis went into n-dimensional space and quickly found Schrödinger. Neither of them spoke. Francis put her hand onto his shoulder, and, at last, brought him back to the real world.

She mentally steeled herself as she passed into reality, ready to watch Schrödinger die. As much as anyone could ever be ready for a thing like that. But that wasn't what happened.

Schrödinger looked down at himself, his skin covering his organs and muscles and bones in a way he was no longer used to seeing. He wasn't dead. But neither had his injuries disappeared. His legs were still shredded stumps, yet he could stand. His arms were still ripped apart by frost, yet he was not losing blood.

He de-morphed, returning fully to his human form for the first time in weeks. His human form was visibly uninjured. He was a blond teenager. He was lean, muscular, and tall, with green eyes that seemed permanently angry underneath angular eyebrows, like a hawk's hardened expression.

Then, he morphed back to his tiger form. Still unhealed. Still standing on legs that weren't there, still looking down at his raw-meat arms.

"What . . . am I?" Schrödinger said wonderingly.

Francis looked sadly at him. "You're free," she replied simply.

Schrödinger gave Francis a wave of two bloody fingers and a saber-toothed smile, as he wandered off into the facility that General Eliopoulos had given to the Rockborn Gang. No doubt he would find Knightmare's cell and release him.

Well, Edilio had warned Eliopoulos that the base was now compromised. And even Knightmare was not immune to missiles. So hopefully that villain would know better than to cause too much trouble. Knightmare was ruthless, but he was also self-interested.

In any case, that was no longer Francis's problem. She grabbed Shade and went back Over There, making their way back to the virtual safehouse and the rest of the group.

Future-Malik was still there, still glancing at the readout that nobody else could see.

"We did it, we released Schrödinger back to the real world," Shade said impatiently. "He's even in morph, last I saw him at least_. Now_ can you see him? Can you please tell us what's happening with his powers? I'm getting weirded out by whatever he's got going on."

Future-Malik frowned. He scrolled back and forth on his unseen readout in apparent frustration. "No. This makes no sense. I _still_ cannot see him."

The rest of the Rockborn Gang stared at Future-Malik. Malik blinked.

"You mean, he's like Francis?" Malik said incredulously. "He's one of the ones that the Dark Watchers do not watch?"

"What does that mean?" Francis asked.

"It means, like you, he exists in some way _outside_ of the simulation," Malik said darkly. "Schrödinger is not bound to the world that we once called 'reality.'"


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter 14: THE ELEVENTH DOOR

Edilio was the first to finally open the eleventh door. He pushed aside the heavy steel door, stepped inside the room, and looked around. He appraised the room carefully, almost calculating, as though making sure it was as Future-Malik had said it would be.

The room was barren. Steel walls, steel floors. But at the very back of the room, on a pedestal putting it at roughly chest level, was a red button, with a pair of white electrodes dangling from wires attached to the platform. The button itself was inside a locked glass case.

Edilio walked over and held the electrodes in his hand. They looked like those things they would stick to your head to measure your brainwaves in the hospital. "Really?" he said out loud, almost laughing at the absurdity. They were inside a simulation, and yet they still apparently needed a physical attachment to the head in order to read the mind?

"What really?" a voice said, startling Edilio into dropping the electrodes. He spun and saw Armo. Cruz was coming in behind him. Edilio had not been the only one who was curious about the eleventh door.

Edilio winced. He wished it hadn't been Armo, but he figured that the Rockborn Gang all knew about the general nature of this room by now, if not the specifics.

"Remember, don't-" Edilio began, before seeming to remember who he was talking to. He exhaled sharply through his nose. "What this button represents is very powerful, and very dangerous. I am not telling you what to do. But it would be very, VERY terrible if anyone, anyone at all," he looked sternly at Cruz, as if he might just as well be talking to her instead of Armo, "abused this power."

Edilio wasn't yet really used to the roundabout way that Armo had to be "talked into" things. He had been warned that Armo could not be given orders. But actually speaking in a way that avoided any orders being given, was harder than it seemed.

"Have you tried it out yet?" Cruz asked innocently.

Edilio shook his head. "No. I can't even think of what to ask for. Seeing it now, it's more intimidating than I thought it would be. You would have to have total control over your own thoughts. You have to think about exactly what you want. If you suddenly picture, I don't know, a dragon or something, boom, you get a dragon. I figured there'd at least be a keyboard or something. Not freaking _electrodes_ that you attach to your head."

Malik stepped into the room behind Armo and Cruz. The room was too big to feel crowded with just the four of them, but if the whole Rockborn Gang came in here, it might get more awkward. "No dragons," Malik said. "He said that it can't create anything living. The program will forbid it. A stuffed or a robotic dragon, maybe, but not a live one."

He looked a little wistfully at the button. He knew that he could not use it. Those electrodes, the total reliance on the thoughts of the person using the device, meant that there was a very real danger posed by the Dark Watchers. The Dark Watchers could reach into the thoughts of a morphed person, and might be able to exert their will over the morpher's own at that critical moment. And Malik, unlike the other members of the Rockborn Gang, could never de-morph.

Future-Malik had warned his simulated twin that this might be the case. He'd said that he would try to design a keyboard interface, but apparently that had not worked. Which, unfortunately, made sense. It would take a lot of words to convey the exact specifics of a physical object, you couldn't just type "apple" without the program wondering if you meant Granny Smith or Honeycrisp or Red Delicious. And even then, each individual apple was slightly different in infinite possible ways. Whereas a mental image of an apple, conveyed in intimate detail, could smooth out those differences, give the program something to work with besides long paragraphs of text that would require an AI to decipher.

Yes, Malik thought, a little bitterly, it made perfect sense to make the device thought-controlled. The whole point was to give the Rockborn Gang some illusion of control over their own simulation. It wouldn't make sense to then build an AI to interpret their wishes for them.

Armo stepped forward as the first volunteer. "We should do a test run. And I have excellent control over my thoughts."

Edilio quirked an eyebrow. "As long as nobody tells you what to do," he said skeptically.

Armo nodded. "Yeah, as long as that," he said with a grin, but then sobered. "I know I can seem like a loose cannon, and by my own admission I'm not the smartest among us, but the one thing I do have is complete and total control over my mind. That's the reason _why_ nobody can tell me what to do. Trust me, more powerful people than you have tried to control me, and failed."

Edilio nodded respectfully, and stood aside. He almost started to tell Armo what object to produce for a test, but then realized he had no choice but to simply trust Armo.

Armo stepped forward. He turned the key in the lock and opened the glass case. Attached the electrodes. Closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. And pressed his palm gently, almost reverently, down on the button.

A single blueberry scone, complete with a napkin underneath, appeared at the center of the room.

Armo turned around and grinned. "I guess it works."

Edilio nodded approvingly. "Which means we now have just a little bit of control over this simulation we call reality. That's the first real good news we've had in a long time."


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter 15: POWER PRACTICE

Sam was still a long way from getting used to the incomprehensible reality that was Francis's n-dimensional space. _Well, too bad,_ he told himself, as he strained to focus on his power.

Three-dimensional objects seemed somehow 'flat' in this bizarre place. His force-fields weren't quite like spheres, they were like flat circular walls that could be easily side-stepped.

He tried to cast several bubbles in succession, at different angles, to wall off each other in a way that would be airtight. But no matter how he tried, there were gaps. It was like trying to make a box out of sheets of paper, without any tape to hold them together. Worse, he kept somehow ending up making them merely 'parallel' to each other, with the gaps running between the layers.

But he was starting to notice something. The space inside the bubbles, sometimes, seemed ever so slightly _different_ from the space outside. In ways that he couldn't quite define.

Astrid would, of course, have an answer to that. And she'd phrase it in a way that would make it seem obvious, like he was stupid for not thinking of it himself.

Even after all these years, he still loved that about her.

He would ask her when he got back to the safehouse. In the meantime, he could see how much control he actually had, over this newly discovered aspect of his power. How _different_ could he make the insides of his bubbles?

It occurred to him to wonder whether this aspect had always been there, or if it had developed more recently, as Armo's power had done. In Sam's case, however, there was no way to know. It would have been much easier for him simply not to notice this subtle difference, than it would have been for Armo not to notice he could freeze the very air in front of him.

In any event, he didn't really notice the time slipping by, until Francis came over to him and said, in the hazy speech of n-dimensional space, "I, uh, think we're making progress. It's probably time to grab something to eat and take a break, huh?"

She still held back ever so slightly, seeming a little nervous around him. The legendary Sam Temple. That was a rueful thought. He was used to that, to the effect of his fame on people, but he still just wished Francis would get over it.

"Yeah," he agreed. "How have you been doing?"

"I've been trying to go farther and farther," she said. "I haven't tried stabilizing an actual wormhole yet, but I went to India just now. I think it was India. There was foreign-looking writing everywhere, at least, so I know it wasn't America." She made a face. "I ended up in the ocean a _bunch_ of times before I got there. I'm not much of a swimmer, but I just kept using my power over and over until I got to land again."

Sam was impressed. "India? That's a long way. How many jumps did that take?"

She blew the air out of her lungs as she considered. "A dozen or so? I think I can sort of stretch and shrink space, so I can kind of teleport that way. And I think there's no limit to how much I can stretch it, no limit to how far I could teleport if I really set my mind to it, but . . . " She blew out air again. "It just makes me nervous to push it too far too quickly. Like I might end up in outer space before you're ready to protect me from it." There was an unfinished feeling to that explanation, an unspoken "or . . . ," like there was more she wanted to say, but couldn't figure out how to say it. Instead, she tilted her head at him. "How about you?"

"Still can't make anything airtight," Sam admitted. "But, well, I noticed something that I should probably ask Astrid about. More weirdness, maybe, but maybe it's weirdness we can use."

"Weirdness?" she said with a slight laugh. "We don't have enough of that?"

Once Sam was back in the real world, he went almost immediately to Astrid's library/room. He was slightly hungry, but grabbing something to eat could wait. He explained to Astrid, to the best of his ability, what he had seen, the worlds inside his bubbles. How objects within had seemed sharper or duller, or had begun to disintegrate at the edges, or, at least once, everything had shrunk into itself and become so tiny and distorted that the space itself had seemed to warp the light within the bubble. That effect, thankfully, had ended as soon as he'd dispelled that force field.

"The FAYZ," Astrid said simply, like it was obvious. A book lay open in front of her, momentarily forgotten. "Your powers mimic the FAYZ. The thing is, the FAYZ was never _just_ a force field. It altered the laws of physics inside. Things that were never possible in our universe, became possible within the FAYZ. It was more like its own little universe, than a simple force field around a part of this one." She looked closely at Sam, with that evaluating, appraising look she sometimes got. "It would seem that you may be able to manipulate the laws of physics, Sam."

He was silent for several moments, not quite knowing what to say.

Finally, he said, "I'm going to grab something to eat. You want anything?"

Astrid smiled at him, then kissed him on the cheek. "Unimaginable power just landed in your hands, Sam . . . but, of course, for you, that's just business as usual."


	17. Purple Moleskine 2

**From the purple moleskine:**

_Chaos._

_That's what life feels like right now. Just incoherent chaos._

_We've been bouncing from one crisis to another. Knightmare. Schrödinger. And now this new epidemic. Even our solutions are erratic, like we're throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. The big red button in that eleventh room. The path towards the dark empty space where the mad AI might be. Like whoever is writing this story has no idea what the hell they're doing._

_But, no, WE'RE the ones who have no idea what the hell we're doing. There is no one writing this story. Or if there is, it's the same AI that is trying to destroy our world.  
_

_It isn't so much that we've been kept busy this whole time. We haven't. But it's still just too much. Too much to think about, too much that we will never be able to fix._

_Well, I suppose the end of the world was never going to be easy, was it?_

_And the worst part is, I get the feeling that our one friend from the real world, the REAL real world, is hiding something. Something big. He's scared, as scared as we are, but why? He should be above it all, yet he's every bit as scared as us._

_It isn't an act, I'm pretty sure of that. No, he isn't just pretending to care, for our benefit. Something is going to happen to his world, if our world ends. Or at least . . . I don't know. I don't know what else it could be. Our supposedly simulated world is somehow vitally important to his world, that's all I know._

_Well, at least my own powers are not critical to the upcoming mission, the mission to meet our creator. Maybe I shouldn't be quite so glad about that. Perhaps that means I'm a coward. But it has meant that, for the first time in what feels like a long time, I get to be close to Armo._

_He's been working on his powers, too. Astrid and Shade and Malik, the trio I've started subconsciously thinking of as "the smart ones," wanted to study him, see where his unexpected power boost came from, or at least how to replicate it. But Armo shut that down, REAL quick. He has absolutely zero interest in being studied._

_Still, he's been trying to get control on his own. He's been using glasses of Coca-Cola, of all things, trying to get them cold without freezing them solid. He shattered one glass, and the soda inside formed an almost artistic half-shattering half-splashing shape as it froze._

_I haven't told him that he reminds me of the polar bear in those old Coca-Cola commercials. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate the comparison._

_I feel like I'm wasting too much time, just watching my boyfriend shatter glasses and grumble in frustration at every tenth glass of not merely cold but frozen solid Coca-Cola. But it's moments like this, not moments of overwhelming grandeur or fast-paced action, that make life worth living. That justify our fateful decision not to pull the plug on the world. Small things, small moments, that somehow aren't small at all._

_Happiness. Love._

_In the end, that's really what we're fighting for, isn't it?_


	18. Chapter 16

Chapter 16: CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT

Future-Malik was still there in the common room, but seeming almost like he was stretched between worlds. His physical body was here, but his focus was obviously far away.

Dekka didn't want to interrupt his work, even though she had a feeling that what he was doing was just an exercise in futility. But there was another, even more powerful reason she didn't want to interrupt him. There were some questions that could never, _should_ never, have answers.

It wasn't quite the first time she had thought about asking questions that she was better off not having the answers to. And, as before, as long as she didn't know, she could still hope.

Brianna. As always, the thought of the name brought a catch in her throat, tears to the corners of her eyes.

She had to ask this. For her.

Even so, she hesitated for a very long time. In the end, she simply could not bring herself to ask it out loud. Instead, she morphed. The Dark Watchers invaded her mind, intruded upon her thoughts, violated her memories. But one of those Dark Watchers was Future-Malik, and to him, she posed her terrible question, yelling at him with her mind.

_If our entire world is only a simulation, if a human life is nothing more than so much data, then . . . could a human death be undone? Surely, if the data could be recovered, if a backup existed somewhere-_

"Stop," Future-Malik said suddenly. Dekka looked up to see him glaring at her, but his tired eyes quickly softened. Then, he sighed. "I'm sorry. But you have no idea of the processing power needed to-"

"I don't care!" Dekka raged suddenly. She de-morphed. "I don't care about processing power, surely there's enough power somewhere!"

"There isn't," Future-Malik said flatly. "Every ounce of power my world has, is already being used to simulate _your_ world. Every computer. Every hard drive. Everywhere. There is nowhere left to put backup data, let alone the volume of data we would need to restore entire human beings. We could, maybe, re-create a cat, but certainly nothing more complex than that."

Dekka crashed down onto a couch, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She knew it had been foolish to hope, knew that she had been grasping at straws, knew it could never have been that easy, so why did she still feel so cruelly disappointed? "I just keep wanting it all to mean something," she cried out in frustration. "So many lives lost. So much pain and suffering. And for what? To make some fake world for you to watch like a TV show? What the hell is the point?"

Even through her misery, in the back of her mind, stabbing urgently at her brain, was a sense that she had just missed something. Something big. Something Future-Malik had let slip.

"Death has never inherently 'meant' anything," he said gently, after a moment's consideration. "In your world, nor mine. Even the most heroic, the most self-sacrificial deaths, have never had some grand cosmic reason. But they didn't have to." He looked Dekka squarely in the eye. "Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, it is up to the living who are left behind, to make sense of death. The dead have never cared, whether they are in heaven, or simply gone. It is the living who must find meaning. So let me ask you. Did your loved ones' deaths mean something to _you_? Did their lives touch yours in some way that you now cannot forget?"

Dekka nodded savagely.

"Then it does not matter how those lives came into being. Real, or simulated. They mattered."

Dekka sighed deeply. "What if-" she began.

"I thought this was all a small research project in one lab," Astrid said, making Dekka jump. She hadn't seen Astrid come into the common area. "Now you're saying it's being simulated all across your entire world? What on Earth could possibly be so important about _this_ simulation that would make it worth tying up an entire planet's worth of computing power?"

She had a dangerous glint in her eyes, like she had just figured something out. Dekka was figuring it out too, or at least, she had realized what it was she'd missed, what it was that Future-Malik had let slip. Future-Malik saw the dangerous glint in Astrid's eyes, and looked down in defeated resignation.

"Your world is a simulation, too, isn't it?" Astrid accused. "You somehow figured out you were in a sim, but no creator ever stepped forward to take credit. So you made your own sim, to test the theory, to see if _we_ could find a way out. If we could find our creator, then maybe you could do the same." Her expression turned grim. "But then it started unraveling. Changes to the laws of physics. Your AI going rogue. You've almost lost your chance to gather any meaningful data at all."

Future-Malik pretended to go back to scrolling through his unseen data readouts, but he wasn't fooling either of the girls. "Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle," he said finally. "You have it in your world, too. That quantum blurriness, the inability to pinpoint the exact location or speed of elementary particles. You can know the location, or the speed, but never both. As you measure one trait with increasing precision, the other trait changes, ever more erratically."

Astrid was nodding along, but letting him go on, for Dekka's benefit. Dekka cocked her head quizzically, wondering where he was going with this.

"That law is a hallmark of simulations," Future-Malik went on. "It's a way to save data. If the sim doesn't have to determine the exact position and velocity of every last particle within the sim, but rather creates that data only when it is measured, it saves a very great deal of computational power. Any world that contains Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is, therefore, almost certainly a simulated one. We found a few other clues, of course. Other traces of simulated data, other laws of physics that don't quite make sense in an objectively 'real' reality."

"A simulated world, simulating a simulated world," Astrid muttered. "Simulations within simulations."

"Is there even an actual, real world, out there, somewhere?" Dekka demanded. "Or is it just one fake world after another, forever?"

Future-Malik shook his head. Not to signal "no," but to say that he didn't have an answer to that. He had long-since been searching for an answer to the same question.

His gaze was distant once more. His body was still here, but his mind was moving very far away.


	19. Chapter 17

Chapter 17: BUT SATISFACTION BROUGHT IT BACK

During their conversation, Future-Malik had off-handedly mentioned that the most complex thing he could bring back from death might be a cat. And, as it turned out, Dekka had once lost a cat. Edith Windsor, sometimes just E for short, had been a little rough around the edges, but then again, so was Dekka. That cat was the closest thing Dekka had had to a friend, for most of the four years since the FAYZ. Until Dekka had learned to use her new power and had accidentally shredded the unfortunate feline in the process.

If they were going to be fighting for their lives inside a simulation of a simulation just to give Future-Malik's world a chance to meet their God, Dekka reasoned, then the very least he owed her was to give her her stupid cat back.

It seemed like such a small thing, the life of a cat, but it gave her a weird sense of purpose, she realized. As if E had been the real reason, all along, why Dekka had asked Future-Malik if he could bring back the dead. As if it had never been about Brianna.

It was now a couple days after that conversation, but even now, at the thought of Brianna, Dekka sighed shakily, her breathing ragged. She was not quite sobbing, but not quite okay, either.

Hope was a dangerous thing, but of course she had long-since known that. No, it was better to never expect anything good of the world. Hope would always lead to disappointment, and disappointment to sorrow.

Dekka sat on the bed of her "apartment," and held her head in her hands, fighting back her own emotions. Suddenly, right in front of her, there was a black and white blur. It startled her, but of course it was only E, sensing Dekka's mood and jumping up onto her lap to comfort her. She petted E, her thoughts still on the inevitable hopelessness of life, and so she only vaguely sensed that something was very wrong. That feeling of wrongness, finally, drew an actual sob from her.

The moment "Edith" began to purr, Dekka knew.

This, this thing, it was _not_ her cat. It looked like E and it moved like E, but it was not E.

Dekka had, many times during the year and a half since she had owned E, broken down sobbing, just as she was now. The events of the FAYZ had always stayed fresh in her mind, even two, three, four years later. And whenever her mind drifted to thoughts of Brianna . . .

Edith Windsor's reaction to this had always been the same. First, a condescending scowl from across the room. As if to say, _get over yourself._ If that didn't work, and it usually didn't quite, she would saunter over to Dekka and give her exactly one headbutt on the chin. _Okay, you've had your cry, now buck up._

If Dekka ever tried to return the affection right then, E would always scamper off in a huff and go back to giving Dekka that condescending scowl. The cat simply would not allow herself to be petted or cuddled until Dekka had regained control of her own emotions. Nevertheless, the aloof tactics usually worked. Dekka had always responded better to a bit of tough love than to any open displays of tenderness, anyway.

But this cat? This cat was purring in her lap and gazing up at her with loving eyes that were certainly not Edith's. All of which only made Dekka cry harder. She had only wanted her stupid asshole cat back, damn it! Was that too much to ask?

She angrily pushed the cat away, suddenly doubting that the fake animal even had enough consciousness to care. Indeed, the cat didn't seem hurt or offended by the angry shove (as literally ANY cat should have been), but only meowed once and tried to get back in Dekka's lap. The meow, at least, had been a perfect simulation of Edith's. But that only made the rest of it worse.

"How hard can it possibly be?" she raged up at the ceiling and at the unseen Future-Malik, "to simulate a God damned CAT?!"

Future-Malik had the good sense not to suddenly appear and answer that. But he must have done something, from wherever he was, must have somehow tweaked some personality setting inside the "mind" of the fake Edith, because the cat suddenly hissed angrily, and ran for the door of Dekka's apartment and into the common area. Dekka blearily followed the cat, feeling responsible somehow. Future-Malik had clearly adjusted the cat much too far in the other direction. It had looked like a wild animal, ready to attack.

Edilio, meanwhile, was coming out of his own room, which happened to be the door next to Dekka's. He was heading from into the common area to join the other members of the Rockborn Gang that were already lounging there, which was pretty much everyone except for Sam, Francis, and Dekka. They had the giant TV set up to watch "The Matrix," of all things. Edilio guessed that was appropriate, a simulated story about life in a simulation, to be watched by people who were inside at least one simulation inside of another.

And he could use a little downtime, for once. He had been coordinating with Eliopoulos for the past three hours about how to prepare for the possibility of a super-powered epidemic. But there just wasn't anything anyone could do, not that Edilio hadn't already known that. It wasn't like you could quarantine people who could walk through walls or teleport or even simply destroy buildings. At this point, Edilio was mentally exhausted. He was more than ready to sit down, relax, and calmly and quietly watch-

"¡AYE POR DIOS!" Edilio yelled as he was suddenly hit from behind. He had no time to process what was happening, all he knew was that he was being attacked by something with sharp claws digging frantically into the skin of his neck.

As quickly as it had attacked, the cat ran off. Future-Malik had, apparently, corrected the cat's aggression back down to sane levels.

But in the sudden adrenaline rush, something had happened to Edilio that took everyone by surprise.

Edilio had morphed.

* * *

Thank you to my friend Mandie (D-man!) who supplied a Spanish phrase for Edilio to yell.


	20. Chapter 18

Chapter 18: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY

The first thing the other members of the Rockborn Gang noticed was that Edilio's morph was the darkest shade of black any of them had ever seen. He absorbed all light, or very nearly so, which rendered the contours of his body invisible. Vantablack. He looked like he was cut out of a sheet of black construction paper, like he was only a shadow of a shape and not the shape itself. It only became apparent that he was still a three-dimensional creature when he moved. His soft brown eyes seemed to shine from the otherwise empty void of his face, a face that was too tall, not quite the right proportions to be a human face.

He was still the same size, and roughly the same shape, as he had been. His was small, for a morph. But sturdy-looking, with thick limbs like tree trunks. And his legs and feet sprouted stiff, knobby tendrils, which looked a bit like roots.

But the group only had a fraction of a second to take in Edilio's new appearance, before everyone's attention was suddenly pierced by a shrill, tortured, inhuman screech. It was a sound of pure agony, a sound created within the white-hot core of a raging tornado of pain that no human being could ever hope to endure.

Malik!

Shade was quickest to recognize the source of the sound, and turned her head just in time to see Malik crumple to the ground. But this wasn't the Malik she had become used to seeing. This was not his too-perfect, not-quite-real morph of himself. This was the _real_ Malik. The Malik who had long-ago been burned by steam and lava from the beast that called itself Napalm. This was Malik, the horrifying slag heap of molten flesh clinging to a char-broiled skeleton.

"Morph, morph, MORPH!" Shade screamed at him. "Oh my God! Are you crazy?! Why on Earth did you de-morph?!"

She, almost reflexively, did what she had learned to do in any life-or-death situation, what had become instinct after many, many battles: she morphed. Or, more accurately, she _tried_ to morph. But it was like there was suddenly a wall in her mind, a solid and unyielding barrier cutting her off from the part of her brain that allowed her to change her form.

She couldn't morph! What was happening?

She glanced frantically around the room, trying to find the source of the mental "wall." Whatever had done this to her was clearly also doing it to Malik, and if it didn't stop, very soon, Malik was going to die. Through her panic, she only slowly realized what should have been obvious from the start.

Shade's eyes landed on Edilio at the same time as Astrid's did. It was him, the two of them both realized at the same moment. Edilio had morphed at the same moment that Malik had de-morphed. His morph must somehow be blocking anyone else's ability to morph!

"De-morph, you idiot, DE-MORPH!" Shade screamed at Edilio. There were tears in her eyes, even though her expression was one of pure rage.

Astrid, more gently, said, "Edilio, you need to get human. Quickly!" She mostly managed to keep her voice calm, but still she urgently snapped the last word.

Edilio, desperately focusing on his human form through his growing panic, obediently de-morphed. His human form was pale and shaking. "That was me? I did this?"

The screaming had stopped. Malik was morphed once more, but still lying on the floor, sweating and gasping for breath. The fresh memory of all that pain was more than enough to sap every last ounce of strength he had.

"Yeah," Shade answered Edilio coldly, through gritted teeth. "That was you."

"Hey, I told you, all of you, that I never wanted anything to do with ANY of this!" Edilio suddenly shouted. "I never wanted powers! I did everything I could to _avoid_ this exact situation! I never even took the stupid rock!"

"Exactly," Astrid said gently. "You wanted nothing to do with powers. And so, now you _cancel_ powers."

Edilio wanted to apologize to Malik. But he knew that anything he said would sound flat and empty. He had almost killed Malik. A few more seconds of hesitation, and Malik could have died. What could he ever say to make _that_ okay?

"I'm sorry, man," he said anyway, and it sounded just as empty as he knew it would.

Malik still couldn't quite manage to speak. But he nodded weakly, an acknowledgement of Edilio's apology. And, perhaps, an acknowledgement that Malik knew Edilio was not to blame. The forgiveness hurt much worse than anger would have.

Edilio was quiet for several minutes. Not even able to form his thoughts into words, as his mind scrambled to catch up with what had just happened to him.

But then, a thought struck him. Edilio had _power_. That which he had escaped for so long, had finally found him. And if he had learned anything from people like Sam and Dekka, it was that power this great could only be used for something greater than himself. It was for protecting people, especially those who could not protect themselves. It was a heavy and terrible responsibility. But it was a responsibility that he must now accept.

He was vaguely reminded of an old superhero movie quote to that effect, something about power and responsibility, but he didn't quite remember the exact quote. But whoever had written it, well, they had clearly known what they were talking about.

"As soon as she gets back to this dimension, I need to talk to Francis," Edilio said, with shaky determination. "I'm going to need her to take me to the real world. There's something there that I need to do."


End file.
